Breast Cancer – Genetic Profiling Test

Transcript

So for your early stage hormone positive breast cancers that do get upfront surgery, generally a genetic profiling test will be done on that final pathology. And usually that’s done for tumors greater than anywhere from 0.5 centimeters, which are half a centimeter, up to a centimeter in consideration of what’s called adjuvant chemotherapy. And adjuvant chemotherapy just means chemotherapy after the surgery. So that genetic profiling test helps the medical oncologist determine what your benefit would be to chemotherapy after your upfront surgery. A lot of patients with hormone positive early stage breast cancers actually can avoid chemotherapy, but that’s the reason why we do that profiling test, because it gives us a lot of confidence in that decision. So for early stage hormone positive breast cancer that have undergone primary resection, the genetic profiling tests that we do on that pathology helps us determine the benefit to chemotherapy. And generally that test is run on those tumors that are anywhere from 0.5 to one centimeter or larger. This helps us determine the absolute benefit to chemotherapy in those patients. And sometimes we’re able to avoid chemotherapy altogether based on those tests.