7 out of 10 oncologists agree that little is being done to prevent recurrences in women with breast cancer. Over 50,000 women each year receive a diagnosis of breast cancer, the most frequent neoplasm in Italy. Despite progress, over 24% of women continue to relapse. The oncologists' appeal: a greater commitment to identifying, preventing and treating even that not small residue of recurrences, in the medium and long term. Adjuvant medical therapy performed after surgery or neoadjuvant therapy, before surgery, represent the only strategy to reduce the risk of recurrence. Treatment after surgery for breast cancer should be personalized, but this requires new investigations and tools. For example, by avoiding unnecessary toxicity, prescribing adjuvant therapy to those people who will never relapse. As with all therapies, attention must be paid to the risk-benefit ratio in post-surgery care. Today, to identify these patients, 'classic' tools are used such as tumor size, lymph node status, presence or absence of hormone receptors, and the proliferative rate of tumor cells. However, studies are underway that are promising regarding the development of increasingly reliable predictive diagnostic tests.
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