Side-effects cause some breast cancer patients to skip hormone...( finding that a quarter would prefer inj...),Health

However, the research threw up one extremely worrying result: that nearly half of women said they sometimes forgot their tablets and more than one in ten deliberately didn't take them at times.

"The principle reason that women are not adhering to their breast cancer treatments is hot flushes and this affects post and pre-menopausal patients," said Professor Fallowfield, "Some doctors are unconcerned about this as nobody actually dies of a hot flush; but post menopausal women are embarking on treatment that brings back hot flushes and night sweats when they thought they had finished with them. For pre-menopausal women, possibly taking hormone tablets, who have also been hit by chemotherapy, the sudden onset of menopausal hot flushes and night sweats is a devastating assault on their well-being."

She said that much more attention needed to be paid to these particular side-effects, which are seriously under-estimated and can make life utterly miserable. Doctors or nurses did offer advice such as wearing layers of clothing, avoiding spicy foods, hot drinks etc., but most women will have already tried the obvious. Mild anti-depressants sometimes helped.

"A third of women are still getting hot flushes after two years so that's why we are seeing these 'little drug holidays'," she said.

"It is serious because we don't know how many tablets have to be missed before efficacy is affected. But, we know up to 40% of women often miss tablets, and it could be argued that the likely benefits of hormone treatment are even greater than has been proven in trials because the results are skewed by non-compliance. Hormone treatments are playing a major role in reducing recu
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Contact: Margaret Willson
m.willson@mwcommunications.org.uk
44-1-536-772-181
European Society for Medical Oncology
19-Oct-2005