What survival benefits do premenopausal patients with early breast cancer need to make endocrine therapy worthwhile?

What Was Tested

This clinical trial looks at Goserelin and Tamoxifen.

However, these treatments often result in menopausal symptoms, sexual dysfunction, permanent infertility, or the need to delay pregnancy.

The researchers aimed to quantify the survival gains that premenopausal patients with early-stage breast cancer require to justify the side-effects and inconvenience of adjuvant endocrine treatments.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 102 women were involved.

PubMed indexes the participants as teenagers and adults, women only.

Participants consisted of 102 women who had been diagnosed with early-stage (stage I-II) breast cancer 6-60 months previously, who were aged 40 years or younger at diagnosis, and who had been treated for a minimum of 3 months with endocrine therapy (67 with tamoxifen alone, seven with goserelin alone, and 28 with tamoxifen and goserelin or oophorectomy). 76 patients also received chemotherapy, and 75 received radiotherapy.

Participants attended a face-to-face patient-preference interview, in which they were presented with four hypothetical clinical scenarios that were used to quantify the gains in survival rate and life expectancy that women judged necessary to make their endocrine therapy worthwhile.

How the Study Was Run

They also completed a questionnaire on standard psychological measures.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Age of Onset, Antineoplastic Agents, Hormonal, Antineoplastic Combined Chemotherapy Protocols, Breast Neoplasms, Chemotherapy, Adjuvant, Decision Making and Goserelin.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a clinical trial of Goserelin and Tamoxifen in 102 women.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 4 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 2005 (The Lancet. Oncology), a journal based in England.

More context: the related Goserelin library page, all human trials.