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Are Short-Term or Long-Term Recurrence Rates More Important in Breast Cancer Screening?
- Emiel J.T. Rutgers, MD, PhD;
- Lajos Pusztai, MD, PhD; and
- René Bernards, PhD
- From The Netherlands Cancer Institute, 1066 CX Amsterdam, the Netherlands; M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77230; and Agendia BV, 1098 SM Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
TO THE EDITOR:
The recent review by Marchionni and colleagues (1), which compares several multigene signatures for breast cancer prognosis, states that for the MammaPrint (Agendia BV, Amsterdam, the Netherlands) 70-gene test, “[f]ifteen percent of patients with the good-prognosis signature had recurrence by 10 years, demonstrating that when the 70-gene signature is used alone in this mixed population, the long-term risk in the good-prognosis group may not be low enough to justify forgoing chemotherapy.” At first glance, this recurrence rate (14.7%) does seem high when compared with that of the OncotypeDX test (Genomic Health, Redwood City, California), which was only 6.8% by 10 years in the low-risk group (2). However, this direct comparison is flawed because …
