Creating a Personal Roadmap

Step 3: Weighing Options

When you or someone you care about has been diagnosed with advanced breast cancer, it is important to learn about all of your options for treatment before making a decision. Take some time to learn and explore options because:

You want to make an informed decision — this is one of the most important decisions you will ever make.
Quickly beginning treatment before exploring all your options you may exclude you from being able to participate in a clinical trial (experimental treatment). Many clinical trials do not let you enroll if you have already begun another treatment.
First learn about all of your options. In most cases, it is more important to get the "right treatment" for you rather than to begin treatment immediately.

So, first learn about all the options. When you are thinking about treatment there are at least two major categories of treatment to consider:

Standard of care is a treatment that has been tested in clinical trial settings and has been proven to be superior to other treatments.
- Overview of options
  - Treatment Options Overview - National Cancer Institute
    Different types of treatment are available for patients with breast cancer. Some treatments are standard (the currently used treatment), and some are being tested in clinical trials. A treatment clinical trial is a research study meant to help improve current treatments or obtain information on new treatments for patients with cancer. When clinical trials show that a new treatment is better than the standard treatment, the new treatment may become the standard treatment. Patients may want to think about taking part in a clinical trial. Some clinical trials are open only to patients who have not started treatment for their current diagnosis.
  - Treatment and Side Effects - Breastcancer.org
  - Treatment Options by Stage of Disease - National Cancer Institute
  - Treatment of Locally Advanced Breast Cancer - Susan G. Komen for the Cure
  - Treatment of Metastatic Breast Cancer - Susan G. Komen for the Cure
- Drug Information Summaries - National Cancer Institute
  You may read about and be offered a number of different drug based treatments. To learn more about the background, research results, possible side effects, approval information, and on-going clinical trials with these drugs, you can look most of them up in the NCI's drug information summaries. They provide consumer-friendly information about certain drugs that are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat cancer or conditions related to cancer. The alphabetical list of drug information summaries includes brand and generic drug names. For each brand name, the generic name is shown in parentheses: Brand name (Generic).
Experimental Treatments - Experimental treatments are those which are currently in the clinical trial setting and have shown to be promising but are not yet proven. These clinical trials are currently running and we won't know the answer as to whether they work better than an existing treatment until the trial is complete. Note: Some clinical trials are open only to patients who have not started treatment for their current cancer diagnosis.
- How to Find a Cancer Treatment Trial - The National Cancer Institute
  A 10-step guide to help you think about and find a clinical trial that is right for you.
- Questions to Ask the Research Team - American Society of Clinical Oncology
  As you find appropriate clinical trials, you need to ask the research team a number of questions before you can consider that option.
- Your Response to Treatment - Breastcancer.org
  When looking at data and weighing options, every patient wants to know "What does all that mean to me?" The following explains what response rates really means in the context of research findings.