Net Treatment Benefit of TCH vs AC-TH in HER2+ Early Breast Cancer

In a poster presented at SABCS 2024, Prof Marc Buyse and Dr Samuel Salvaggio (One2Treat, Louvain-la-Neuve) used a new statistical method to compare the benefit/risk ratio of TCH and AC-TH in patients with HER2-positive early breast cancer. With this new statistical method, a single efficacy measure (‘the Net Treatment Benefit’) can be calculated by combining a number of pre-specified outcomes. For the presented analysis, the time to death was combined with the time to any cancer event (i.e., recurrence, progression or second malignancy) and the cardiac safety. While outcomes for survival and cancer-related outcome was similar for TCH and AC-TH, TCH was significantly superior in all outcomes related to cardiac safety. The resulting Net Treatment Benefit proved to be significantly better for TCH than for AC-TH providing an additional incentive to avoid anthracyclines as much as possible in this setting. The presented statistical method will now also be used to develop a software program that allows patients to identify their preferred treatment based on the treatment outcomes that truly matter to them.