Interview
with Neil Love, MD from Breast Cancer Update for Medical Oncologists,
Program 5 2000
Play
Audio Below:
A
decade ago, I think most oncologists felt that aggressive equaled appropriate.
And both from the negative results that we’ve seen with high dose
chemotherapy, but also with the positive results that we’ve seen,
for instance, with the many new hormonal manipulations that have come
in, it’s become apparent that appropriate is not always aggressive
and that appropriate is appropriate in a biologic sense rather than beating
the patient up. So, I think that’s been one major thing. I’d
say the other paradigm that got shattered during the last decade –
which is a chemotherapeutic one, and in essence is a continuation of this
thing – and that’s to say that in the metastatic setting if
you asked physicians a decade ago what represented the standard of care,
the "standard of care" was combination chemotherapy. What’s
absolutely clear now, a decade later, is that for most oncologists sequential,
single agent chemotherapy in the metastatic setting is considered entirely
appropriate and reasonable. This has come about, of course, largely as
a result of the taxanes coming in, but also has involved a whole series
of new agents – such as capecitabine, such as navalbine, such as
gemcitabine – all of which are routinely used by oncologists as sequential
single agent therapies. So, I’d say that is the other major change
that I’ve seen in the last decade.
