Recent Trends in Local-Regional Recurrence Rates: Implications for Therapeutic Intervention

Purpose of Review: Local and regional recurrences pose a significant therapeutic challenge in the field of breast cancer. Unfortunately, between 5 and 10% of patients will have this form of recurrences. This article seeks to review recent declines in locoregional recurrence risk and discuss the potential implications for the extent of therapeutic intervention currently implemented and how this may change in the future. Recent Findings: Recurrence rates have significantly decreased in recent times. Additionally, the vast amount of clinical research in the field of breast cancer allows for guidelines and traditional treatments to be updated and revamped as novel information is discovered. Patients who had neoadjuvant chemotherapy have been shown to experience a higher rate of recurrence in comparison with patients that had adjuvant chemotherapy. Radiotherapy is now recommended for patients with one to three positive lymph nodes. Axillary resections have been shown to provide no benefits to patients undergoing radiotherapy. Summary: Local and regional recurrence rates are decreasing lately both due to improvements in various therapeutic interventions and in implementation of breast cancer screening so that cancers may be caught earlier. Due to declines in local recurrence risk, it may be reasonable to scale back surgical, chemotherapeutic, and radio-therapeutic interventions.