Department of Medicine, The Royal Marsden Hospital, London, United Kingdom.
Eur J Cancer. 2011 Sep;47 Suppl 3:S38-47. doi: 10.1016/S0959-8049(11)70145-9.
Metastatic breast cancer has always been a challenging disease to treat, with cytotoxic chemotherapy often being deemed a merely palliative treatment that is given to relieve cancer-related symptoms. However with the introduction of more effective systemic therapies over the last two decades, recently we have witnessed substantial improvements in clinical outcomes such that many patients now live with metastatic secondary breast cancer for many years. Various different cytotoxics are used in clinical practice, and targeted biological therapeutics have an increasing role to play in the management of different breast cancer subtypes. The appropriate use of these different systemic therapeutics has been one of the principal reasons for the continued improvement in clinical outcomes for women with advanced breast cancer, including a probable substantial impact on overall survival.
转移性乳腺癌一直是一种具有挑战性的疾病，细胞毒性化疗通常被认为只是一种姑息性治疗，用于缓解与癌症相关的症状。然而，在过去的二十年中，随着更有效的全身治疗方法的引入，最近我们观察到临床结果有了实质性的改善，以至于许多患者现在可以带着转移性乳腺癌活很多年。在临床实践中使用了各种不同的细胞毒性药物，而靶向生物治疗在不同乳腺癌亚型的治疗中发挥着越来越重要的作用。这些不同的全身治疗方法的合理使用是晚期乳腺癌患者临床结果持续改善的主要原因之一，包括对总体生存的可能产生重大影响。
