Lilly: Building a Dialogue on Metastatic Breast Cancer

Oct 13, 2014 12:45 PM ET

Building a Dialogue on Metastatic Breast Cancer

Today’s guest post is authored by Timothy J. Garnett, M.D., Senior Vice President, Development Center of Excellence, Lilly Research Laboratories and Chief Medical Officer.

Today is Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day, and I want to take a moment to bring this devastating, deadly disease to the forefront of the conversations being had during breast cancer awareness month. Often, conversations about metastatic breast cancer - which claims the lives of approximately 40,000 people in the U.S. every year – are not as visible as those had around the estimated 2.8 million breast cancer survivors currently alive in the U.S.

With no current cure and no definitive prognostic statistics, the conversation for the more than 155,000 men and women living with metastatic breast cancer each year isn’t about beating cancer; it’s about finding the right course of treatment that will help them live to see another day, month or year.

Read on for more about how Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day was started and how it hopes to improve patient outcomes.