Dr. Kunkler on the 10-Year PRIME 2 Data Examining Post-Surgery Radiation in Breast Cancer

Ian Kunkler, FRCP, FRCR, DMRT, MRCP, professor and lead of Clinical and Translations Breast Radiotherapy Studies at the University of Edinburgh, discusses the 10-year results of the PRIME 2 trial in patients with breast cancer, presented during the virtual 2020 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium.

The phase 3 randomized PRIME 2 trial was originally launched to assess the impact of the omission of post-operative radiotherapy in a group of older, low-risk patients with hormone receptor–positive breast cancer, says Kunkler. At 5 years, results indicated that radiotherapy reduced the risk disease recurrence from 4.1% in the no-radiotherapy group to 1.3% in the irradiated group.

The 10-year results showed that there has been an increase in the local recurrence rate in the patients who did not receive radiation to 9.8% compared with 0.9% in the irradiated group, concludes, Kunkler.