Whats after tamoxifen, if still having period?
Lynn Schuchter, M.D.: That is an excellent question. I would say there is some controversy about how to best manage that individual and there is not a consensus on how to manage that patient because we don’t have clinical trials to specifically guide us in treatment recommendations. One possible option is to take a medication called an aromatase inhibitor like Arimidex (chemical name: anastrozole) or Femara (chemical name: letrozole), in conjunction with a medicine to put the patient in menopause, like Zoladex (chemical name: goserelin acetate) or Lupron (chemical name: leuprolide acetate). The difficulty here is that women who are postmenopausal who have taken 5 years of tamoxifen can then be offered an aromatase inhibitor and there is clear data that those women benefit from an additional five years of this hormonal therapy. This approach is associated with improvement in outcome. However, the mechanism of aromatase inhibitors in terms of its effectiveness against breast cancer is on
