Abstract

Breast carcinoma is the most frequent type of cancer affecting women worldwide. Fortunately, the number of successfully treated patients has been increasing with the earlier diagnosis and new ways of treatment, such as targeted biological therapies.

Due to recent developments (e.g. approval of Tyverb® (Lapatinib) in the EU in June 2008), there is an increased interest to explore the epidemiological situation of the mentioned patient group in more detail, allowing to get a better insight into the relationship between risk factors and treatment effectiveness, long-term survival, and also evaluate economical aspects of the therapy.

The project will cover nine countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine) with the following objectives:

* monitoring of ErbB2-positive patients and collection of epidemiological and clinical data,
* monitoring of patients treated with therapy targeting the ErbB2 receptor in participating countries,
* assessment of effectiveness of the chosen therapy,
* assessment of safety of the chosen therapy,
* analysis of patients' survival in relation to monitored clinical factors,
* analysis of data from patients treated with anti-ErbB2 therapy in relation to reference population data.