When the researchers further analyzed their results they found that only the women with hormone receptor positive breast cancers benefited from the adjuvant treatment. Dr. Hillner is conducting further analyses of different strategies based on these study results because of the major implications for public health policy in countries with limited economic resources. In discussing different standards of care in poorer and richer countries, Dr. Love and Dr. Nguyen Ba Duc, director of the National Cancer Institute in Hanoi, Vietnam, noted that the risks and benefits of the available treatment programs for breast cancer are much different in Vietnam and the United States. To date, drug hormone receptor tests on a regular basis are not yet possible in Vietnam. Dr. Love added that it is a moral requirement as well as a practical necessity that potential new cancer treatments in poorer countries be made available to the majority of patients who need them.
Many treatments are unavailable or too expensive for use in poor nations.
For many poorer women, these study results are very important. Only when a tumor shows no evidence at all of hormone receptors, should hormonal therapy be omitted. The preponderance of evidence shows that hormonal treatment benefits women with breast cancer in decreasing chances of recurrence and in increasing survival. The benefits of hormonal treatments continue even after treatments are completed. While the optimal duration of tamoxifen treatment is not yet known, what is remarkable about tamoxifen and oophorectomy adjuvant treatments is that women given these treatments continue to benefit and do increasingly better than their not-treated colleagues, years after the treatment is stopped.