It was brought to the authors’ attention that Lacaze et al1 [19 in original manuscript] reported that only about 15% of stage IV cancers were oligometastatic in their single institution study, and therefore the statement that 40–60% of stage IV cancers are oligometastatic is not supported. The true fraction of oligometastatic disease among de novo stage IV breast cancers is hard to ascertain and likely variable across practice settings due to variability in testing method (limited CT versus PET-CT), timing of testing (at staging of clinically stage II/III disease versus symptom driven), and access to care and socioeconomic status of a given patient population. Analysis of the US National Cancer Data Base (NCDB) by Plichta et al2 including 16,187 patients diagnosed with de novo stage IV metastatic breast cancer during 2010–2013 indicated that 65.2% of patients had a single site of macroscopic distant metastasis at presentation. Overall, the true fraction of oligometastatic is most likely between 15–60% depending on practice setting and patient population.
As a result, the sentence “Approximately 40% of newly diagnosed metastatic breast cancers, including de novo disease, are oligometastatic” should instead read “Approximately 15–40% of newly diagnosed metastatic breast cancers, including de novo disease, are oligometastatic.”
This has been corrected as of [Production to add correction date]. The authors apologize for the error.
References
- 1.Lacaze JL, Aziza R, Chira C, et al. : Diagnosis, biology and epidemiology of oligometastatic breast cancer. Breast 59:144–156, 2021 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 2.Plichta JK, et al. A Novel Staging System for De Novo Metastatic Breast Cancer Refines Prognostic Estimates. Annals of Surgery 275(4):784–792, 2022 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]