Monday, November 30 | 1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. | M6-SSIR01-2 | Room E353B
For very elderly women with early breast cancer who cannot undergo surgery, treatment choices are limited. In this presentation, researchers led by Toulsie Ramtohul, MD, from the Curie Institute in France, will report 12-month quality-of-life results for percutaneous breast cryoablation in this patient group.
The prospective, single-center, nonrandomized phase II study enrolled consecutive women between 2023 and 2025. Eligible patients were 70 or older with unifocal, node-negative, HR-positive/HER2-negative invasive breast cancer measuring 20 mm or less. All underwent ultrasound-guided, nitrogen-based cryoablation under local anesthesia. After multidisciplinary counseling, they were considered ineligible for standard surgery because of frailty, comorbidities, major operative or anesthesia risk, or refusal of surgery.
Fifty-one women were treated, with a median age of 84.8 years and a median age-adjusted Charlson Comorbidity Index of 6.0. Of these, 39 (76.5%) had a G8 frailty score of 14 or lower. Cryoablation led to an adjusted mean improvement in global health status of 10.8 points (p < 0.001). Among patients with paired observations, mean scores rose from 65.9 to 77.5.
After a median follow-up of 20.0 months, one patient developed an ipsilateral breast tumor recurrence, remote from the cryoablation zone. No regional recurrence, distant metastasis, or breast cancer-specific death occurred. Eight women (15.7%) died of other causes, and no grade 3 or higher adverse events occurred within 30 days of treatment.
This approach led to clinically meaningful improvement in 12-month quality of life, excellent tolerance, and favorable short-term oncologic outcomes, the study authors highlighted.
Find out more by attending this session.
