[Fulvestrant in heavily pretreated postmenopausal women with advanced breast cancer]

Abstract

Background and objective: Fulvestrant (Flv) is a pure antiestrogen without agonist activity. Flv is effective as second line treatment in postmenopausal women with advanced breast cancer after tamoxifen.

Material and method: We performed a retrospective study of 36 consecutive postmenopausal women treated with Flv and advanced breast cancer progressing on prior therapies. 62,8% received Flv as third line treatment or more (all patients had previously received endocrine treatment for early or advanced breast cancer), 54,3% adjuvant chemotherapy and 67,5% received chemotherapy for metastatic disease. Our objective was to analyze the response rate, clinical benefit, time to progression (TTP) and toxicity profile.

Results: In our study 11,4% patients had partial responses (PR) and 22,9% had a stable disease (SD) >24 weeks. Clinical benefit rate (CB) [RP+RC+SD]: 31,4%. TTP: 4,2 months (CI 95%, 2,6-5,8), with a median follow-up of 8,9 months. Flv was well tolerated, 22,9% patients had adverse events, all grade I/II, and only 5,7% of women gave up the treatment.

Conclusions: These data demonstrate that Flv is an effective and safe therapy for heavily pre-treated postmenopausal women with advanced breast cancer.