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Early breast cancer

Clinical Practice Guidelines for the Management of Early Breast Cancer

August 2001

Clinical practice guidelines for the management of early breast cancer aims to be a document useful for both health professionals and consumers. It is designed to:

Assist in decision-making by women and their doctors;
Educate all involved in the care of women with breast cancer;
Assess and assure the quality of care;
Reduce the risk of legal liability by improving care; and
Bring the issue of cost-effectiveness into the public arena.
This book presents guidelines, and does not pretend to be a textbook. Clinicians looking for further information on the biology and natural history of breast cancer should consult the relevant texts.

The guidelines are not rigid procedural paths, nor are they prescriptive. They aim to provide information on which decisions can be made, rather than dictate what the decisions should be.

The guidelines are designed to provide information to assist decision making and are based on the best evidence available at time of publication. They are a guide to appropriate practice, to be followed subject to the clinician’s judgement and the woman’s preference in each individual case.

This is the second edition of the Clinical practice guidelines for the management of early breast cancer and replaces the first edition released in 1995.

Topic specific guideline updates

July 2008

As new evidence becomes available, NBOCC develops topic-specific updates on priority guideline topics as supplements to the Clinical practice guidelines for early breast cancer.

Current guideline updates available for early breast cancer are: