Triple negative breast cancer is a vital area of study for both researchers and clinicians as it provides important information such as the current approaches used for the treatment of TNBC, the treatment trials that clinicians are using to test for effective cure of the illness, and prevalent of the illness among women. Triple negative breast cancer is common in younger and premenopausal women (Wahba and El-Hadaad 2015). Among the most common consequences of TNBC is death with the number of the people who are dying because of the disease continuing to increase (Bao et al., 2016). Wahba and El-Hadaad (2015) point out that TNBC is the most common cancer among female patients, with the disease causing up to 23% of all cancer cases relating to women. Swede et al. (2016) contends that although there is a slight improvement in mortality rate for African American breast cancer patients, the death rate for patients who are not in a good position to access care services or treatment continues to rise. As TNBC is highly prevalent in Africa American women, the illness is becoming a leading cause of death in women across the world (Swede et al., 2016). The overall objective of this paper is to present a summary on the treatment trials that concerns TNBC, with the look of literature that has been published currently.
Search Strategy
For this discussion, PubMed search engine was used to obtain nursing journals articles on triple negative breast cancer trials. The researcher used PubMed to get the reviewed articles because it has different features of nursing studies and information of various nursing fields. The keywords that were typed in the PubMed engine to research on the TNBC topic include “triple negative breasts cancer human trails OR TNBC AND treatment OR treatment options and the prevalence of TNBC OR the current approaches used to treat or diagnose TNBC.” The journals that were accessed in the PubMed platform were published between 2014 and 2017.
The researcher used PubMed filters to restrict the search to clinical trials while eliminating literature reviews and systematic reviews. Thus, this restriction helped avoid the use of secondary based studies and only focus on primary studies. Initially, the search involved 25 articles published on different dates, but a review of the article’s topic reduced the article to 18. Further analysis of the abstracts helped further reduce the total number of articles to 10. Most of the excluded articles were not focused on treatment options for triple negative breast caner. A final analysis of the contents of the ten articles reduced them to five articles, which the researcher used to give out the summary on the topic of this paper.
Summary
Through the search process, the researcher established that the treatment of TNBC continues to be a challenge for both the patients and clinicians because of fewer treatment options. The key risk factors that relate to TNBC treatment options include body max index and weight change factors (Bao et al., 2016). Typically, weight gain is mentioned as a common and persistent problem in breast cancer, especially to the younger patients being treated with chemotherapy (Bao et al., 2016).
As one of the most popular treatment options, chemotherapy (CT) is quoted as the best method of treating breast cancer (Collignon et al., 2016). Chemotherapy (CT) has been shown to have a high success rate in treating TNBC, majorly because of its effectiveness in killing malignant cancer cells. Along the same argument, Tan (2015) notes that apart from its effectiveness in the treatment of TNBC at its early stages, physicians use chemotherapy to conduct TNBC tests in phase II and phase III trials alongside other therapy options (Tan 2015).
Moreover, in some cancer treatment centers, TNBC is treated through the combination of angiogenesis and chemotherapy. A study by Ganesan et al. (2014) indicates that positive or improved outcomes are noted in the cases where physician use both chemotherapy and angiogenesis to treat TNBC patients. The angiogenesis or anti-angiogenic agents are mostly used in phase I trials, where the physician conducts statistical tests concerning TNBC and combines the findings with matched or non-matched systematic therapy (Ganesan et al., 2014). Similarly, Pal et al. (2014) found that in some countries such as England, TNBC is treated through surgery and therapy. Pal et al. (2014) showed that unlike the individual use of chemotherapy or surgery, combining the two treatment options was more effective and not only helped fasten the process, but also reduced chances of new tumors developing.
Further, some physicians use radiotherapy to treat TNBC. Pal et al. (2014) showed that radiotherapy through mastectomy leads to improved prognosis of TNBC cases and effectively helped in the treatment (Pal et al., 2014). In essence, through the understanding of various studies, it is apparent that the treatment of TNBC is effective when treatment methods are incorporated with systematic chemotherapy. Therefore, for the healthcare system to ensure that the survival rate for women with TNBC increases, it is necessary to integrate chemotherapy to any form of treatment procedure or system. Combining more than one treatment option would possibly be more effective than individual treatment options. Thus, increased research is necessary to help determine the effectiveness of such options.
Bibliography
Bao, P.P., Cai, H., Peng, P., Gu, K., Su, Y., Shu, X.O. and Zheng, Y., 2016. Body mass index and weight change in relation to triple-negative breast cancer survival. Cancer Causes & Control, 27(2), pp.229-236. doi: 10.1007/s10552-015-0700-7.
Collignon, J., Lousberg, L., Schroeder, H. and Jerusalem, G., 2016. Triple-negative breast cancer: treatment challenges and solutions. Breast Cancer: Targets and Therapy, 8, pp.93-107. doi: 10.2147/BCTT.S69488.
Ganesan, P., Moulder, S., Lee, J.J., Janku, F., Valero, V., Zinner, R.G., Naing, A., Fu, S., Tsimberidou, A.M., Hong, D. and Stephen, B., 2014. Triple-negative breast cancer patients treated at MD Anderson Cancer Center in phase I trials: improved outcomes with combination chemotherapy and targeted agents. Molecular cancer therapeutics, 13(12), pp.3175-3184. doi: 10.1158/1535-7163.MCT-14-0358.
Pal, S., Lüchtenborg, M., Davies, E.A. and Jack, R.H., 2014. The treatment and survival of patients with triple negative breast cancer in a London population. Springer Plus, 3(1), pp.553-357. doi: 10.1186/2193-1801-3-553.
Swede, H., Sarwar, A., Magge, A., Braithwaite, D., Cook, L.S., Gregorio, D.I., Jones, B.A., Hoag, J.R., Gonsalves, L., Salner, A.L. and Zarfos, K., 2016. Mortality risk from comorbidities independent of triple-negative breast cancer status: NCI-SEER-based cohort analysis. Cancer Causes & Control, 27(5), pp.627-636. doi: 10.1007/s10552-016-0736-3.
Tan, A.R., 2015. Triple-negative breast cancer: molecular subtypes and new targets for therapy. American Society of Clinical Oncology, e31-e39. doi:10.14694/EdBook_AM.2015.35.e31.
Wahba, H.A. and El-Hadaad, H.A., 2015. Current approaches in treatment of triple-negative breast cancer. Cancer biology & medicine, 12(2), pp.106-116. doi: 10.7497/j.issn.2095-3941.2015.0030.
