St. Gallen/Vienna 2019: A Brief Summary of the Consensus Discussion on the Optimal Primary Breast Cancer Treatment

Abstract

This year, the St. Gallen Consensus Conference on early breast cancer treatment standards took place for the third time in Vienna, Austria, which is where the next conference will also take place (next date: March 17-20, 2021!). Once again, more than 3,000 participants from over 100 countries came together, and, overall, the 2019 St. Gallen/Vienna conference was a great success. After 3 days of reviews conducted by a global faculty concerning the most important evidence published in the last 2 years, the Consensus votes' challenge was to define the impact on routine everyday practice. This year, the conference's main theme was the optimization of early breast cancer therapies by assessment of the magnitude of benefit, aiming at further refinement when compared to de-escalation and escalation, which were mainly the topic of the 2017 conference. Patient empowerment and the importance of shared decision-making were particularly emphasized. The traditional panel votes were moderated by Eric Winer from Harvard, and for the most part, they managed to clarify most of the critical questions. This brief report by Editors of Breast Care summarizes the results of the 2019 international panel votes with respect to locoregional and systemic treatment as a quick news update for our readers, but it expressly does not intend to replace the official St. Gallen Consensus publication that will follow shortly in Annals of Oncology.

Keywords: Adjuvant treatment; Axillary dissection; Bisphosphonates; Breast surgery; Chemotherapy; Denosumab; Early breast cancer; Endocrine therapy; Neoadjuvant systemic therapy; Radiotherapy; Sentinel node; Targeted therapy.