What Is Triple Negative?

Transcript

Let’s talk about triple negative breast cancer, which means that those three receptors that we talked about previously, those are all negative. So for triple negative breast cancer, it does tend to be a more aggressive form of breast cancer. This is also the breast cancer that’s generally associated with those BRCA or BRCA mutations. So for triple negative breast cancer, because it tends to be more aggressive, we generally do tend to do more neoadjuvant chemotherapy, which, again, means chemotherapy prior to surgery. Now that’s a benefit because when patients get neoadjuvant treatment, it tells us a couple of things on that final pathology. So when the breast surgeon and the medical oncologist get back that pathology specimen from your surgery, it tells us what kind of response your tumor had to the chemo, which can help us with first of all, prognosis.

And secondly, if you haven’t had a full or complete response to the chemotherapy, it also allows us the possibility of doing more chemotherapy after your surgery. Again, that’s called adjuvant treatment.

Key Takeaways

1. Triple negative breast cancer means you are negative for all three receptors.

2. It tends to be more aggressive and associated with BRCA mutations.

3. For triple negative, we tend to do neoadjuvant chemotherapy, which is chemotherapy before surgery.