Re: Dormancy of Mammary Carcinoma After Mastectomy

Abstract

Karrison et al. (1) retrospectively studied 1547 patients with breast cancer operated on during the period from 1945 through mid-1987 to evaluate the limit of breast cancer dormancy. In the report, the authors stated that they “did not see evidence for a second peak in the hazard curve as reported by Demicheli et al.” (2) and drew evidence for tumor dormancy from the elevation of mortality rates out to 20 years after primary tumor removal and from the detection of new recurrences even after this time. While we agree with the authors' conclusions about the occurrence of tumor dormancy, we wish to focus on the question of why they did not observe a two-peaked hazard curve, as has been confirmed by other reports (3-5).