Dec 17, 2020
The annual meeting of the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium was held virtually this year from Dec. 8 to 11 and attracted participants from around the world, including medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, researchers, and other health care professionals. The conference highlighted recent advances in the risk, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of breast cancer, with presentations focusing on emerging treatments in hard-to-treat patient populations, including patients with metastatic breast cancer.
As part of the RxPONDER study, Kevin Kalinsky, M.D., of the Glenn Family Breast Center at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University in Atlanta, and colleagues found that postmenopausal women with lymph node-positive early-stage breast cancer and a low recurrence score receive no additional benefit from chemotherapy.
December 13, 2020
The risk of becoming dependent on pain medication and sedatives after mastectomy and breast reconstruction surgery is more significant than doctors realized.
A study presented this week at the virtual meeting of the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) found that people who underwent mastectomy and breast reconstruction were at increased risk of developing dependence on pain and sedative medication.
The study showed that 13.1 percent of patients who were not prior opioid users became new persistent opioid users after surgery. Researchers found 6.6 percent of patients who were not prior sedative-hypnotic users became persistent users after surgery.
“It’s striking how many patients this is an issue for. It’s more than maybe we would have thought prior to doing the study,” said the lead author, Jacob Cogan, MD, a fellow in hematology-oncology at NewYork-Presbyterian Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City.
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Some women who are prescribed opioids and other drugs to ease pain after mastectomy and reconstructive surgery continue to use those medications, researchers reported.
In a large database analysis, new persistent use of opioids – defined as filling at least two prescriptions following surgery was observed among 13.1% of the women who underwent the breast cancer surgery, said Jacob Cogan, MD, of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Irving Medical School in New York City.
In addition, about 6.6% of women in the study who had been prescribed another class of addictive substances sedatives or hypnotics to help them deal with anxiety or insomnia after the surgery became persistent users of those medications as well, he said at at the virtual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS).
More than 1 in 8 women who undergo mastectomy with reconstruction for breast cancer treatment or prophylaxis become persistent users of controlled substances, according to a retrospective cohort study.