Effective treatment of intractable cutaneous metastases of breast cancer with electrochemotherapy: Ten-year audit of single centre experience

Abstract

Electrochemotherapy is an effective treatment for cutaneous breast cancer lesions that have proven refractory to standard therapies. As smaller lesions were found to be more responsive, we suggest that ECT should be considered as an early treatment modality, within multimodal treatment strategies.

Electrochemotherapy in the Treatment of Breast Cancer Metastasis to the Skin and Subcutaneous Tissue - Multicenter Experience

“…Among the patients included in that study 14 were diagnosed with breast cancer, and in this subgroup a 95% OR was obtained. Since then, numerous scientific studies have proved the effectiveness of this method in the treatment of cutaneous metastasis, regardless of histology, with effectiveness in the form of a positive response to treatment ranging from 16% to 100% (with an average of > 70%) [9,10,11,12,13]. Updated standard operating procedures for ECT were published in 2018.…”

Effective treatment of intractable cutaneous metastases of breast cancer with electrochemotherapy: a useful contributor to cutaneous disease control

“…The analysis presented was chosen as we feel that reporting the per tumour-treated objective response can lead to a negative bias on the reported figures. As our paper makes clear, of the 242 lesions that developed from initial assessment, 40 lesions, among 6 patients, were either lost to follow-up (34 lesions) or untreated [1]. While some of those lost to follow-up may have failed to return to our centre owing to progression of their cutaneous disease, it may likewise have been due to progression of visceral metastases in the Table 2 that only three patients had a complete response in all treated lesions.…”

“…Dear Sir, We wish to thank Campagna et al for their considered appraisal of our work [1] and their insights regarding the role that Electrochemotherapy (ECT) plays in the treatment of cutaneous metastasis of breast cancer. It is very encouraging to see broader support for the adjunctive role that this treatment can play maintaining quality of life in those with cutaneous metastasis [2].…”

Conjunctival melanoma and electrochemotherapy: preliminary results using 2D and 3D cell culture models in vitro

“…At present, ECT is used in the treatment of lesions in patients with different malignancies, for example metastatic breast cancer (Bourke et al. ), metastatic cutaneous melanoma (Kunte et al. ), liver metastases of carcinomas (Edhemovic et al.…”

“…Individual needle electrodes can be positioned around or within bone or visceral lesions under viewer CT or ultrasound guidance (Mir et al 2006). At present, ECT is used in the treatment of lesions in patients with different malignancies, for example metastatic breast cancer (Bourke et al 2017), metastatic cutaneous melanoma (Kunte et al 2017), liver metastases of carcinomas (Edhemovic et al 2014), sarcomas (Marty et al 2006) as well as head and neck cancer (Lenzi et al 2017), not amenable to surgery or radiofrequency ablation. The treatment may result in complete remission of the tumour without the complications that accompany high chemotherapy doses.…”