• Dana-Farber retrospective analysis of 407 patients with mBC treated with CT between 2005 and 2008.
• Tumor subtype was associated with number of lines of treatment and CT duration. Outcomes for TNBC were less favorable than ER/PR+ and HER2+.

Several years ago Dr Harold Burstein from Dana-Farber, who is on the faculty of this program, asked our CME group to include several questions in one of our national surveys of community-based oncologists about how many lines of chemotherapy patients receive for metastatic disease. Our initial data documented that 5 or more lines were frequently used. Building on that and other work, this ASCO poster reported on 407 patients treated at Dana-Farber. The findings are both interesting and a bit disturbing. For patients with ER/PR-positive and HER2-positive tumors, treatment beyond the third line was common and resulted in reasonable durations that presumably correlated with benefit. The triple-negative population told another story as, for example, second-line treatment averaged 3.3 months. This is not much longer than it might take for the first re-evaluation of a patient, suggesting that many of these individuals who tragically have little time left on Earth may be experiencing unnecessary side effects from ineffective treatment.