Consideration of Long-Term Physical Health Effects From Breast Cancer Therapies

Primary care physicians and patients need to be aware of the long-term effects of various treatments, particularly involving chemotherapy, as it can lead to more substantial physical health declines.

Clara Bodelon, PhD, MS, senior principal scientist of survivor research at the American Cancer Society and lead study author of a paper published in JAMA Network Open that detailed the long-term physical health outcomes from various cancer treatments, told CancerNetwork® that the care for each respective patient must be individualized. If care is individualized, physicians will be better able to control who needs to get chemotherapy and who can be spared from it, thus avoiding long-term physical health declines.

She also spoke about potentially including physical therapy or other forms of care to relieve pain along with cancer treatment to help remedy or alleviate some of the longer-term physical health effects associated with treatments.

Transcript:

We are starting to try to think about personalized medicine and long-term outcomes—it’s going to be a consequence of that personalized medicine. Not all breast cancer survivors are the same and not all necessarily need the same care. We see that those taking chemotherapy are going to be the ones that are going to require the most help, and we need to understand if all chemotherapies are going to be the same, but [the care that these women receive] is going to have to be individualized.

The implication is that we need to inform patients, as well as primary care physicians, because someone could receive chemotherapy or a combination of chemotherapy with endocrine therapy, but if they have chemotherapy, it doesn’t matter if they have other treatments, they may suffer this decline. It may inform physicians that these women may need help long-term, going to physical therapy, for instance, and having it as part of their health care plan. They need these providers to help them offset some of the consequences of the treatment. That may not be the case for endocrine therapy. It may be that some women still need it, but because cancer care is expensive, we need to understand who the ones that need it the most are [and we need] to understand how we change treatments and what the consequences are. Our study starts shedding some light on that.

Reference

Bodelon C, Masters M, Bloodworth DE, et al. Physical health decline after chemotherapy or endocrine therapy in breast cancer survivors. JAMA Netw Open. 2025;8(2):e2462365. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.62365