Breast cancer survivorship care beyond local and systemic therapy

Abstract

Despite persistent inequities in access to care and treatments, advances in combined modality care have led to a steady improvement in outcomes for breast cancer patients across the globe. When estimating the magnitude of clinical benefit of therapies, providers and patients must contend with a multitude of factors that impact treatment decisions and can have long-term effects on quality of life and survival. These include commonly described early toxicities, like aromatase inhibitor-associated musculoskeletal syndrome and neuropathy. But longer-term comorbidities often observed among cancer survivors including weight gain, obesity, infertility, psychological distress, sexual dysfunction, second cancers, bone loss, and body image issues can have lasting effects on quality of life. Equally important, system-level factors such as access to care and resource allocation can have a systemic impact on survival and on the quality of survivorship. Financial toxicity including underemployment can have a lasting impact on patients and caregivers. The resulting disparities in access to treatment can help explain much of the observed variability in outcomes, even within high-income countries like the US. This article revisits some of secondary effects from therapies discussed in a prior 2015 review article, along with other impediments to the optimal delivery of breast cancer care that can affect patients anywhere.

Keywords: Access to care; Breast cancer; Survivorship; Therapy; Toxicity.