Journal Review in Breast Surgery: Management of Residual Disease After Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy

Why should a surgeon care about breast cancer chemotherapy trials? Join Drs. Michael Alvarado, Rita Mukhtar, and Alexa Glencer as they discuss the benefits of neoadjuvant chemotherapy over upfront surgery and the role of adjuvant chemotherapy for select patients who harbor residual disease at the time of surgery.

Learning objectives:
- Understand the benefits conferred by neoadjuvant chemotherapy compared to upfront surgery in certain patients with breast cancer
- Learn about the study design and results of the CREATE-X phase 3 randomized controlled trial comparing adjuvant capecitabine to standard therapy in patients with HER2 negative invasive breast cancer with residual disease following cytotoxic neoadjuvant chemotherapy
- Describe the specific benefit of adjuvant capecitabine for triple negative breast cancer patients and discuss its evolving role with recent FDA approval of neoadjuvant pembrolizumab in this group
- Learn about the study design and results of the KATHERINE phase 3 randomized controlled trial comparing adjuvant T-DM1 to trastuzumab in patients with HER2+ invasive breast cancer with residual disease following cytotoxic and HER2-targeted neoadjuvant chemotherapy

Journal article links:
CREATE-X: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1612645
KATHERINE: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1814017

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