Preserving Fertility and Improving Outcomes in Breast Cancer

Video

Halle Moore, M.D., physician at Department of Solid Tumor Oncology at Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, discusses fertility preservation in women with breast cancer.

Halle Moore, M.D., physician at Department of Solid Tumor Oncology at Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, discusses fertility preservation in women with breast cancer.

A recent study presented at the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium (SABCS) found that women who took goserelin, a GnRH analog that temporarily suppressed ovarian function, not only resulted in a higher rate of pregnancies, but it also improved survival outcomes, too. That particular study was presented alongside four others that also analyzed GnRH analogs in premenopausal patients with breast cancer. They, too, found that this class of drugs can be beneficial.

Related Videos
Image of Kristen Dahlgren at Extraordinary Healer.
Jessica McDade, B.S.N., RN, OCN, in an interview with CURE
Image of a woman with short blonde hair wearing a white blazer.
For patients with cancer, the ongoing chemotherapy shortage may cause some anxiety as they wonder how they will receive their drugs. However, measuring drugs “down to the minutiae of the milligrams” helped patients receive the drugs they needed, said Alison Tray. Tray is an advanced oncology certified nurse practitioner and current vice president of ambulatory operations at Rutgers Cancer Institute in New Jersey. If patients are concerned about getting their cancer drugs, Tray noted that having “an open conversation” between patients and providers is key. “As a provider and a nurse myself, having that conversation, that reassurance and sharing the information is a two-way conversation,” she said. “So just knowing that we're taking care of you, we're going to make sure that you receive the care that you need is the key takeaway.” In June 2023, many patients were unable to receive certain chemotherapy drugs, such as carboplatin and cisplatin because of an ongoing shortage. By October 2023, experts saw an improvement, although the “ongoing crisis” remained. READ MORE: Patients With Lung Cancer Face Unmet Needs During Drug Shortages “We’re really proud of the work that we could do and achieve that through a critical drug shortage,” Tray said. “None of our patients missed a dose of chemotherapy and we were able to provide that for them.” Tray sat down with CURE® during the 49th Annual Oncology Nursing Society Annual Congress to discuss the ongoing chemo shortage and how patients and care teams approached these challenges. Transcript: Particularly at Hartford HealthCare, when we established this infrastructure, our goal was to make sure that every patient would get the treatment that they need and require, utilizing the data that we have from ASCO guidelines to ensure that we're getting the optimal high-quality standard of care in a timely fashion that we didn't have to delay therapies. So, we were able to do that by going down to the minutiae of the milligrams on hand, particularly when we had a lot of critical drug shortages. So it was really creating that process to really ensure that every patient would get the treatment that they needed. For more news on cancer updates, research and education, don’t forget to subscribe to CURE®’s newsletters here.
Image of a woman with black hair.
Image of a woman with brown shoulder-length hair in front of a gray background that says CURE.
Related Content
Image of a patient speaking with a doctor.

Adding Tecentriq to Chemo Did Not Boost TNBC Survival

May 16th 2024
Article

The addition of Tecentriq to chemotherapy did not improve overall survival in patients with relapsed triple-negative breast cancer.

Read More

FDA, Cancer Vaccine Updates and a Misguiding of Breast Cancer Treatment

FDA, Cancer Vaccine Updates and a Misguiding of Breast Cancer Treatment

February 5th 2024
Podcast

One cancer vaccine may still be years away from being available, a breast cancer test may be misguiding treatments for Black women and the review of two oncology regimens are being expedited by the FDA.

Listen

Image of a woman holding a pink ribbon over her breast.

A Year of Grace During Breast Cancer

May 14th 2024
Article

I believe a divine intervention miraculously saved my life when I had a dream about breast cancer — it turned out to be true.

Read More

Cancer Horizons podcast logo

Conference Highlights from SABCS

December 12th 2023
Podcast

CURE® recently covered the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium. In case you missed it, here is some news that came out of the conference that patients should know about.

Listen

Image of a silhouette of a pregnant woman.

Certain Immunotherapy Drugs Not Recommended for Pregnant Women With Cancer

May 10th 2024
Article

When possible, immune checkpoint inhibitors should be avoided in pregnant women with cancer due to lung inflammation and possible miscarriage, researchers found.

Read More

A Poem on Breast Cancer Remission

A Poem on Breast Cancer Remission

May 9th 2024
Article

After being diagnosed with breast cancer, I turned to writing as a form of healing.

Read More