I have had this test. I learned about it on breastcancer.org., called the company, printed out all the paperword and took it to my doc, who had never heard of it. The doc later said she was going to start using it for all her patients. This was three years ago. It is now in the NCCCN guidelines.

The BCI has a yes or no answer to extended hormonal therapy, and a spectrum for risk. You can have benefit for extended therapy and low risk, benefit for extended therapy and high risk. no benefit and low risk, no benefit and high risk.

At the time the cutoff for high risk was 4.7 on a scale of 10. I was a little over 5 so I was high risk. I talked with the company and they had gotten a lot of negative feedback about this cutoff so they have changed things since.

It's up to us whether to test Oncotype, BCI or any other test. I did do some research and decided to trust the BCI. I orginally wanted to do 7 years of letrozole (I read that 7 was as good as 10) but I also needed to treat my bones.

One oncologist told me I could do two years later on- not sure now!

I don't know if BCI is standard practice anywhere yet. I had to make it happen. But it IS in the guidelines. So I would think you can get a doctor to order it. (I went so far as to request it be done on a specific block from my surgery- but I am a little over the top on these things!)

Wow! Thanks for the information!

I had to laugh when you called being in hell while on the medicine. My husband has named my pill the “the pill from hell!”
I keep thinking I’m a fairly intelligent woman. Surely I can find solutions for the side effects!

The Breast Cancer Index (BCI) test is a genomic test that can help predict the likelihood of recurrence of estrogen receptor (ER)-positive, lymph node-negative breast cancer. The test analyzes the expression of genes associated with cancer growth and proliferation, as well as the activity of ER signaling.