Breast Cancer

ABSTRACTTo investigate the knowledge of breast cancer among medical, paramedical and general population of women participants. A prospective observational questionnaire survey was carried out in a tertiary care teaching hospital in northern Karnataka for a period of six months with220 participants. Interviewer administered questionnaire was used. Data obtained was analysed using descriptive statistics. Out of 220 women, 31.36% were medical, 20.92% paramedical and 47.72% general. Almost, 94.20% of medical participants believed breast cancer as inherited. Notably, general group considered trauma(74.28%) and diet (73.33%) as major risk factors. Majority of medical and paramedical women thought lump in the breast as the initial sign of Breast Cancer. Awareness regarding mammography and biopsy in general population was 64.76% and 52.38% respectively. Moreover, 95.5% of medical women and all of the paramedical women thought that chemical / radiotherapy was the best treatment. Breast cancer knowledge and awareness was less among the general women. There is a need of developing effective interventional programs to educate women about breast cancer.Keywords: Awareness, Breast Cancer, Knowledge, Risk factors.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2/neu) gene/protein amplification/expression patterns in breast cancer (BC) of Saudi patients by using conventional immunohistochemistry (IHC) and bright-field double in situ hybridization (BDISH) techniques. King Abdulaziz University Hospital (KAUH), Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A total of 128 consent patients’ (aged 24 to 81 years) samples of breast cancer were subjected to screening for HER2/neu protein expression by immunohistochemistry (IHC) and later for amplification by bright-field dual in situ hybridization (BDISH) method. The clinicohistopathological data of all the patients were collected from the patients’ case records. The expression of the HER2/neu protein was evaluated, correlated to HER2/neu gene amplification status in BC and assessed for potential clinical value by correlation measures. IHC data determined that HER2/neu protein expressed in 18-20% (3+) of our BC patients in Saudi cohort. Some samples showed moderate membranous expression of HER2/neu protein and majority of samples showed either negative or 1+ expression. 73% of all the invasive ductal breast carcinoma tissue slides showed non-amplification HER2/neu gene status and 27% showed amplification HER2/neu gene status. Interestingly, there was a reasonable concordance rate (77 %) between IHC and BDISH data in the analyzed cohort. In conclusion, HER2/neu expression/amplification status in breast cancer of Saudi patients is within the range as compared to other ethnic groups. This HER2/neu (over-expression/amplification) status was concordant using either IHC or BDISH and significantly associated with disease aggressiveness and poor outcome.

To compare Taxanes, antitumor antibiotics and platinum containing chemotherapy regimens in the management of metastatic breast cancer in terms of overall survival, objective response rate and time to progression.Cochrane breast cancer group specialized register; cochrane central register of controlled trials (central), medline, embase, cinahl and who international clinical registry platform were searched using the appropriate search strategy selection criteria. Response rates were analysed as dichotomous variables. 35 trials were included with sample size of 16272 patients with Advanced Metastatic Breast Cancer treated with either Antitumor Antibiotics or Platinum Regimens or Taxanes. The observed overall survival derived for a sample size of 2710 exposed to chemotherapy where as a comparator group of 2591 exposed other therapies. The overall risk ratio was 0.98(M-H, fixed, 95% CI; 0.95 to 1.01).Tumor Response Rate derived for a sample size of 3037 exposed to chemotherapy in comparison to the comparator group of 2951 exposed to other therapies. This study confirms several benefits of chemotherapy especially taxanes, antitumor antibiotics and platinum regimen in metastatic breast cancer, but the selection of drug therapy must be based upon the presentation of the case. Key words: Breast Cancer, Metastasis, Overall Survival, Tumor Response Rate.