This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Lidia Schapira, MD: Hello. I'm Dr Lidia Schapira, and I want to welcome you to Medscape InDiscussion: Breast Cancer. Today, we'll be talking about treatment and follow-up care for premenopausal women with breast cancer, a topic that is challenging for all clinicians — not only oncologists but also obstetricians, gynecologists, primary care clinicians, and mental health professionals. Identifying young women at risk for breast cancer and guiding young women diagnosed with breast cancer requires a very special approach. We need to see them through treatment and involve them in making decisions about their treatment that take into consideration the urgency of treating their cancer. At the same time, we need to keep many options open to preserve their future health and happiness as we think about surgical options and systemic treatments.
Before I introduce the guest for this episode, I want to begin with a case study that will help anchor some of our questions and conversation. A 32-year-old nurse comes to see you after being diagnosed with breast cancer. She just got engaged and would like to have children in the future. She self-palpated a small lump. This turned out to be a 2-cm grade 2 invasive ductal cancer that was strongly ER/PR positive and HER2 negative with an Oncotype DX score of 16.
