← Return to Triple Negative Breast Cancer: What treatments are you having?

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@cindyhikes

After doing a bit more research, I discovered a very helpful tool published (and available for public use) on the NHS web site (NHS is the UK's National Health Service - so highly reputable). My career was in software and systems with mathematics, I also reviewed the technical approach notes and believe the tool has been well-designed and is likely pretty solid. It may be somewhat weaker for TNBC because it represents a fairly small proportion of cases, so the data used to confirm the results might not be as solid (there could be some minor bias due to having just a little over 2,000 patients with TNBC for their confirmation data pool). So we shouldn't assume it is perfect. But it is likely fairly good at helping give some useful guidance.

This tool is used by UK doctors and patients to help understand treatment options and their relative benefits. It doesn't necessarily map directly for patients here, especially if they go directly into neo-adjuvant chemo before mastectomy. And not all treatment options are captured in this tool. So none of us should use it without consulting with a qualified cancer team. But it might help a bit to have this insight as we're considering options for treatment.

I also recently switched to a different cancer center (won't get into all of the reasons), but feel this center is far better at providing the kind of individualized and supportive care I need. And when I mentioned having looked at this NHS tool, the surgeon said their breast cancer team often uses it to help gain some clarity into relative benefits of different treatment options, and then to help inform their patients about those options.

Here's the link if you want to look at it. Caveat: It really is best if you are working with your provider to make sure you haven't missed or misunderstood some of the inputs. If you use it knowing you may not have those exactly right, and are willing to look at other possible inputs that might apply to your situation after all of the lab analysis is complete (post-mastectomy), then you can still use it as long as you realize it is giving you a general idea, not something solid/definitive.
https://breast.predict.nhs.uk

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Replies to "After doing a bit more research, I discovered a very helpful tool published (and available for..."

I entered the data for my situation and the algorithm yielded an 84.6% survival at 5 years for 'surgery only.' Adding 5 years of hormone therapy only changed that number to 84.8%. Which is only an insignificant 0.2% differential. I'm older so that might account for the algorithm result. But I find it interesting as I took the 'surgery only' path.