Dr Naughton on De-escalating Breast Cancer Treatment

Hannah Naughton, MD, explains how breast cancer care has moved toward treatment de-escalation, with less surgery and less chemotherapy. She also explains why the focus now extends beyond survival to how patients are living 5 to 10 years after diagnosis.

Naughton, a breast cancer surgeon at Hackensack Meridian Health, said that breast cancer care has seen many advances over the years. Much of the recent progress has involved doing less: less surgery and less chemotherapy. According to Naughton, this de-escalation has not had a big impact on patient outcomes. Because patients with breast cancer generally do well, attention is increasingly turning to how patients are living after surgery and after their treatments, and how their quality of life can be improved. Survival remains the number one priority, she noted, but the care team is now thinking ahead of it.