Current Trends and Challenges in Real-World Breast Cancer Adjuvant Radiotherapy: What’s Going On?

Background: Treatment of breast cancer (BC) remains a constant and rapidly evolving issue for multidisciplinary breast cancer teams. Considering the emerging understanding and advances in the biological course of this disease, new trends in radiotherapy fractionation, systemic therapies, and oncoplastic surgical techniques are revolutionizing adjuvant treatment approaches to BC. Novel challenges are questioning the integration of adjuvant radiotherapy (ART) into the real-world clinical setting. Methods: PubMed literature search was conducted in order to extract data supporting the role of new trends in breast cancer adjuvant approach according to rising issues in the multidisciplinary team discussion such as sequencing with chemotherapy (CT) plus whole breast hypofractionated radiotherapy (HF-WBRT); the role of ART after neoadjuvant CT (NACT) followed by breast conservative surgery (BCS) in early BC achieving pathological complete remission (pCR); and the integration of ART in immediate autologous breast oncoplastic reconstruction after mastectomy (a-IBR). Furthermore, there are still several concerns about toxicity with adjuvant trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM۱) or breast re-irradiation after BCS relapse in long-term survivors refusing mastectomy. Results: Among ۴۰ hits, only ۱۲ studies answered these issues. Many of them were retrospective studies. Less than ۵۰۰ patients met the criteria for these issues and several conclusions were found exhaustive. Conclusion: Few issues seem to have a literature solution, while there are still open questions in regard to these new trends. Novel strategies through prospective or randomized studies and new consensus guidelines are required.

Keywords:

hypofractionated radiotherapy , neoadjuvant chemotherapy , oncoplastic surgery , re-irradiation