What would be your regimen of choice for a healthy 80+ year old with localized triple negative breast cancer?

My inclination would be to avoid administering an anthracycline to such a patient, as long as you include a taxane and carboplatin in her treatment regimen. If you're treating her in the neoadjuvant setting, Sharma and colleagues achieved a similar pCR rate with every 3-week docetaxel and carboplatin x 6 (52%) as with weekly paclitaxel/every 3-week carboplatin followed by AC (55%) [ASCO 2019]. If you're treating her in the adjuvant setting, Yu and colleagues demonstrated improved 5-yr DFS with w...

After weighing the risks and benefits, I might. An 80-year-old patient has a life expectancy of about 7 years and the risk of relapse for a TNBC is highest in the first couple of years, so this patient is at risk for relapse and death from the breast cancer.

In the ABC trials, for TNBC involving nodes, there was an 11% improvement in IDFS at 4 years with an anthracycline-based regimen versus non-anthracycline-based regimen. Though, I admit that there were probably few if any, 80-year-olds in the ...

Treatment of breast cancer in the elderly is such an important and complicated question. A healthy woman in her early 80s has an actuarial survival of 8-10 years, so it cannot be assumed that she will die of other causes before developing metastatic breast cancer. On the other hand, patients in their 80s generally have less functional reserve than younger patients and are more at risk for long-term complications (neuropathy, cardiomyopathy) with subsequent loss of independence and quality of lif...