title: Advanced breast cancer: an update and controversies on diagnosis and therapy.
abstract: This review on advanced breast cancer considered important differences in the actual definition of this condition. Advanced breast cancer includes locally advanced, locoregionally recurrent and metastatic disease, which have different diagnosis, prognosis and therapy; their actual definitions are relatively uncertain. Differently from the common opinion that metastatic breast cancer (MBC) is a very severe incurable disease, recently it has been reported that a small but not irrelevant fraction of MBC patients can be cured or remain in long-term survival with complete remission. The type of metastases of the population studied in these reports was analysed and the authors hypothesised that the particularly high DFS reported mainly was attributable to the high proportion of patients with locoregional metastases only. Furthermore, the options and associations of the drug therapy available for treatment of advanced breast cancer have been reviewed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Internal Medicine, University of Pisa, via Roma 67, 56126 Pisa, Italy. a.nicoloini@int.med.unipi.it
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nicolini
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Carpi
mesh_terms: D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology / Q000628:therapy; D018572:Disease-Free Survival; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D009362:Neoplasm Metastasis; D009364:Neoplasm Recurrence, Local / Q000473:pathology / Q000628:therapy; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D011379:Prognosis