Postmenopausal women with ER positive breast cancers benefit from adjuvant endocrine therapy. Most such patients should consider aromatase inhibitor therapy at some point in their treatment course as there are modest additional risk reductions over tamoxifen therapy, alone. Longer durations of therapy - beyond five years of tamoxifen - with either ongoing tamoxifen or an AI also improve cancer outcomes. Markers of risk for early recurrence are the same as those for late recurrence. Decisions regarding the optimal type and duration of therapy reflect patient preferences in light of well described side effects of tamoxifen and AI therapy, tolerability of treatment, and established clinical, pathological and genomic markers of risk.
Keywords: Aromatase inhibitors; Estrogen receptor; Late recurrence; Postmenopausal breast cancer; Tamoxifen.
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