San Antonio Breast Symposium, 2007

30th annual meeting of the San Antonio Breast Symposium occurred in mid-December. The goal of the symposium is, “to provide state-of-the-art information on the experimental biology, etiology, prevention, diagnosis, and therapy of breast cancer and premalignant breast disease, to an international audience of academic and private physicians and researchers.” Interesting and innovative research comes out of this symposium every year. Some of the research that I found especially interesting this year:
– A research group based in San Francisco has found a way to discover “lethal cases of DCIS (ductal carcinoma in situ) from ones that will never become life-threatening”. This could potentially prevent other other women in my situation from having a mastectomy or even a lumpectomy, which would be amazing.
– new approaches to detecting early stage breast cancer and DCIS using high resolution MRI
– the use of telemammography in rural communities
– inaccurate application of the clinical breast exam (CBE)
– High incidence of brain metastases found in patients with HER2 positive metastatic breast cancer
– Survival outcomes in pregnancy-associated breast cancer

There’s lots of other interesting research presented at the symaposium. Abstracts and poster information is available at the site.