This week's artwork was donated by Dathan, a pediatric cancer patient who received treatment at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia . These results, from a worldwide overview of 300 randomized trials, that included around 200,000 patients, are a lot better than we expected. In a phone interview with Reuters Health, Sir Richard explained that one of the reasons for the decrease in late relapses is that the quiescent disease is being treated, preventing a relapse.
Nobody really knows why breast cancer sits around so long waiting before it explodes.
The same is true of chemotherapy, he said. He also pointed out that both hormonal therapy and chemotherapy can be used together. If a women has estrogen receptor-positive disease, then hormonal treatment works well, but so does chemotherapy. These aren't mutually exclusive. They'll be giving at least 5 years of tamoxifen or other types of therapy.