Breast cancer treatment guidelines

Abstract

The Institute of Medicine has defined clinical practice guidelines as systematically developed statements to assist practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances. Clinical practice guidelines are designed to improve the health outcomes of patients, to facilitate the dissemination of new research results into clinical practice, to minimize variations in care, to minimize the use of ineffective or inadequately effective therapies, and to assure equitable distribution of resources among the existing patient population. A number of such guidelines focusing directly on breast cancer treatment are available that differ in their development process, outcomes of interest, extent of coverage across the disease continuum, frequency of updating, and utility. This chapter provides an overview of commonly used clinical practice guidelines. © 2011 Springer Science + Business Media.