M. Elizabeth H. Hammond Daniel F. Hayes Antonio C. Wolff Baltimore, April 21, 2010 The writers are co-chairmen of the joint American Society of Clinical Oncology and College of American Pathologists' HER2 and Hormone Receptor Testing Guideline Panels.
Overall sensitivity and specificity of estrogen and progesterone receptor testing were high among participating laboratories.
Overall sensitivity and specificity of progesterone receptor testing were 94.8 and 92.6 %, respectively.
The number of novel alternative splice variants is presented for each receptor tested.
In addition, unlike previous studies, patterns of steroid receptor testing by age group were investigated.
The lack of diagnostic and steroid receptor testing resulted in older cancer patients having no effective treatment with 41% not undergoing a steroid receptor test, 32% of whom received tamoxifen as their sole form of treatment.
On the contrary, other commercial products used for HER-2 receptor testing do not recognise the same epitope as Trastuzumab.
Diagnostic workup in the breast clinic includes mammography, cytology, histology, and immunohistochemistry (IHC; ER, PR, and HER2- receptor testing).
The overall percentage not receiving receptor testing seems high, as steroid receptor testing was recommended in guidelines in use in clinics at the time of the study (BASO, 1998; SIGN, 1998; COIN, 1999; NWBG, 1999), and suggests that further studies including women <65years old are needed to establish what proportions of younger women undergo receptor testing.
Receptor-status data from some previous SSA studies may have been vulnerable to such biases because of a lack of routine receptor testing conducted at diagnosis.
