Abstract
After the original demonstration of the striking remissions of breast cancer which follow removal of the ovaries of premenopausal women [1] or the adrenal glands of postmenopausal patients [2], it has become established that hormone deprivation affords effective, though often temporary, therapy for some but not all individuals with advanced breast cancer. Clinical experience has shown that about half the younger patients can expect benefit from ovariectomy, but a much smaller fraction (20–25%) of postmenopausal patients with breast cancer respond to adrenalectomy or hypophysectomy. A method of predicting a priori which breast cancers are of a hormone-dependent type would greatly enhance the usefulness of endocrine ablation, especially adrenalectomy in the older patient. One could restrict its application to those individuals in which it has a reasonable chance of success, thus sparing the majority of patients the trauma of major surgery which cannot help them and which renders them less able to tolerate alternative types of therapy. It now appears that the objective may be attained by determining the estrogen receptor content of a specimen of the tumor.
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Jensen, E.V., Block, G.E., Smith, S., DeSombre, E.R. (1973). Hormonal Dependency of Breast Cancer. In: Griem, M.L., Jensen, E.V., Ultmann, J.E., Wissler, R.W. (eds) Breast Cancer. Recent Results in Cancer Research / Fortschritte der Krebsforschung / Progrès dans les recherches sur le cancer, vol 42. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-85832-1_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-85832-1_9
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