Dr. Kent Osborne Discusses the PRIME 2 Trial

C. Kent Osborne, MD, professor of medicine and molecular and cell biology, Baylor College of Medicine, discusses the impact of the results of the PRIME 2 trial, which looked at radiotherapy after surgery in women over 65 years old with breast cancer.

Since this is not the only study that suggests that certain therapies can be avoided, Osborne feels that the results of this study will be practice changing. Even though the radiation therapy did reduce the risk of local recurrence, the differences were not great and the overall outcome was not different.

Osborne says that even in the rare case that a patient does recur in the breast without radiation, that patient can be salvaged very well by having another lumpectomy and radiation or by doing a mastectomy. However, this can be avoided in the majority of patients by not conducting radiation therapy.

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