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Chemo or no chemo? That is the question.
Doctors are at odds over whether some women with breast cancer should have chemotherapy—one treatment among the arsenal long seen as crucial to fighting the disease, along with surgery and radiation.
Many oncologists are shunning chemo as risky and ineffective at combating some early-stage breast tumors. Traditionally, the majority of women with invasive breast cancer were treated with some combination of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy.
A shift to less chemotherapy or none at all, called “de-escalation,” is being hailed by some as revolutionary, following what some doctors see as years of overtreatment with drugs that may have harmed more than helped. Proponents of de-escalation say chemotherapy—the use of chemical agents to treat the disease—should be used only when it appears likely to reduce the chances of the cancer spreading
