The most important findings in our report are: a) that the 10 year overall survival with hormonal receptor positive patients was equivalent to that achieved with chemotherapy and optimal hormonal therapy in a major American trial  EST 5188; and b) that in this individual trial, the failure rate in adjuvantly treated  hormone receptor positive patients between years 5 and 10 was so demonstrably high, strongly supporting the concept that  a large fraction of this subset - hormone receptor postive tumor bearing patients - have a chronic disease .

The most important take home messages follow from the above comments - that optimal combined hormonal therapy is a very viable option for treatment of women with this subset of disease, and that better control of  this subset of disease after 5 years needs to be defined. This is especially important for the large fraction of women with breast cancer  in the world each year  who are premenopausal and have  hormone receptor  positve tumors, for whom chemotherapy is not a treatment  option.