Dr Erica Mayer on Improving Patient Adherence to Hormonal Therapies

Listening to patient concerns and issues and communicating with them can really help providers keep patients with breast cancer adherent to their hormonal therapies, said Erica Mayer, MD, MPH, assistant professor, medicine, Harvard Medical School.

Transcript

What tools can physicians employ to improve adherence of hormonal therapies among patients with breast cancer?

I think, you know, a major tool that providers can do to help maintain patients on therapy is communication and listening to how patients are doing assessing their symptoms and acting, and if a patient needs to take a short break, if we need to rotate from one aromatase inhibitor to another, if we need to explore a supportive care medicine, or having a patient try acupuncture exercise—there's a lot of strategies to use.

But I think the most important thing is if a patient is unhappy or uncomfortable or feels like they, they just can't do it, we need to know, and we need to work on that together, rather than not hearing each other and then having somebody stop therapy early.