How much survival benefit is necessary for breast cancer patients to opt for adjuvant chemotherapy? Results from a Chilean survey

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer (BC) is the leading cause of cancer death in Chilean women. Adjuvant chemotherapy decreases recurrence and death from BC. The recommendation to indicate chemotherapy is complex. Adjuvant! Online is a valuable computational tool to predict survival benefit obtained with adjuvant systemic therapy. Previous studies in Caucasian patients with BC showed that they are willing to receive chemotherapy for a small benefit. No studies, to our knowledge, have been done in the Hispanic or Latino populations. METHODS: We interviewed females with BC who had previously received adjuvant chemotherapy. Age, stage at presentation, time since last chemotherapy, type of chemotherapy, marital status, number of children, and level of education were recorded. We used the graphic representation from Adjuvant! Online to question each patient on how much survival benefit she required to accept chemotherapy. RESULTS: There were 101 women surveyed. The average age was 55.9 (±10.2), 54.5% had involved lymph nodes, 59.4% were married, and 15.8% did not have parity; 62.3% of females accepted chemotherapy for an absolute survival benefit of 1% or less. In a multivariate analysis, younger (p = 0.02) and less-educated patients (p = 0.018) were associated with lower survival benefit required to opt for chemotherapy. CONCLUSION: In our study, the acceptance of chemotherapy by the Hispanic population requires minimal survival benefit and is in agreement with the Caucasian population reported elsewhere. To our knowledge, our report is the first study that evaluates the perception of Latino patients regarding the benefit of chemotherapy in early BC.