title: [Breast cancer treatment in 2004: towards a tailored approach].
abstract: Breast cancer remains one of the most frequent malignancies that general practitioners are confronted with. Given their key-counselling role for the affected families, they need regular updates on the multi-disciplinary management of the disease. This has been characterized by an evolution towards less aggressive surgery, sparing many women the morbidity of a full axillary node dissection; in parallel, there is increasing hope for "individualized" adjuvant medical treatment, given the development of new technologies that provide an "identity card" of the genes expressed by each tumour. These technologies should improve our ability to identify which women truly need adjuvant chemotherapy and to select the best medical treatment on an individual basis. While providing these messages of hope, this chapter also reviews the major classes of drugs used for the treatment of advanced breast cancer.
authors.affiliation: Services de Chirurgie, Institut Jules Bordet, ULB.
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Nogaret
authors.forename: Ch
authors.initials: Ch
authors.lastname: Bernard-Marty
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Mancini
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Piccart-Gebhart
mesh_terms: D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans