A research report submitted to the Faculty of Medicine university of tho
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements
for the Degree of Master of science in Medicine. / Breast cancer is a major health problem, afflicting up to 1 in 9 women in developed countries
with Western diet and life style. While screening programs have led to earlier diagnosis,
including diagnosis at a pre-invasive stage in a number of women, the majority of patients with
breast cancer still present with clinically detectable, invasive breast cancer, which even if
clinically localised still carries the risk of systemic micrometastases, Such patients have been
shown to benefit both in terms of disease free as well as of overall survival from the addition
of adjuvant systemic treatment.
The identification of progostic factors which can be used to tailor specific forms of adjuvant
treatment to the patient's disease has been an important goal of breast cancer research during
the last 20 years. A particularly important goal is the early identification of poor risk patients,
who may benefit from aggressive intervention with intensive chemotherapy,
While many prognostic markers, including nodal status, hormone-receptor-status, ploidy and
growth fraction and the expression of various oncogenes and proto-oncogenes by the tumor
cells have been proposed as prognostic factors, the results, to date, have been equivocal for
a number of these. Recently there has been much. interest in the prognostic importance of cerbB-
2 protein in breast cancer. Most of these studies have concentrated on
immunohistochemically stainable e-erb-2 in tumor tissue. This dissertation focusses on the
prognostic impact of the soluble c-erbB-2 protein in the serum of breast cancer patients treated
at the Breast Clinic of tne Johannesburg Hospital and University of the Witwatersrand. The
results of this investigation have been reported under the title "Soluble c-erhB-2 fragment in
Serum Correlates With Disease Stage and Predicts for Shortened Survival in Patients with Early
Stage and Advanced Breast Cancer" by H. Kandt, L. Seymour & W.R. Bezwoda, Published
in British Journal of Cancer, Vo170 p739-742" 1994. / Andrew Chakane 2018
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/25917 |
| Date | January 1994 |
| Creators | Kandl, H. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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