ASSESS: Early Breast Cancer Treatment Decision Support Tool

Patient Details

Complete Patient Details for each of the items, then select 'Get Outcomes' to see treatment options.

Age at Diagnosis

Age when a biopsy first showed breast cancer.

Post Menopausal

Menopause often begins in a woman’s late forties or early fifties. A woman is considered in menopause 12 months after her last menstrual period.

BRCA Gene Mutation

Women who have a BRCA1 or BRCA2 (BRCA1/2) gene mutation are BRCA positive.

Hormone Receptor Status

Hormone receptor-positive tumors are tumors that have more than 1% of estrogen and/or progesterone positive receptors. Hormone receptor-negative tumors are tumors that have less than 1% of these receptors. This number can be found in the pathology report.

HER2 Status

HER2-positive tumors are tumors that have high levels of a protein called human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). HER2-negative tumors are tumors that have normal or low levels of HER2. HER2 status can be found in the pathology report.

To learn more about results for patients with triple negative breast cancer, click here.

Tumor Size

Pathologists measure the size of the tumor that is removed during surgery. Tumor size can be found in the pathology report.

Tumor Grade

Tumor grade refers to how much the cancer cells look like normal cells and how many cancer cells are in the process of dividing. Tumor grade can be found in the pathology report.

Positive Nodes

The number of positive lymph nodes can be found in the pathology report. ‘Positive’ means at least one underarm lymph node has cancer.

Treatment Options

Select different treatment options to compare survival estimates.

Hormone Therapies

Hormone therapies are treatments for breast cancers that need hormones to grow. These therapies can lower hormone levels and/or block hormones from helping the cancer cells. Click here for more information.

ChemoTherapies

Chemotherapies are treatments that use powerful medicines to kill cancer cells or stop them from growing. The chemotherapies in this tool are adjuvant chemotherapies, meaning they are given after local treatment (surgery and/or radiation). Click here for more information.

Chemotherapies are treatments that use powerful medicines to kill cancer cells or stop them from growing. These treatments may be given either before or after surgery. Patients with Stage II or III triple negative breast cancer may be candidates for chemotherapy and immunotherapy, which is given before surgery. This regimen consists of paclitaxel and carboplatin with pembrolizumab, followed by doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide with pembrolizumab. After surgery, pembrolizumab is continued to complete one year of therapy. Click here for more information.

Additional Therapies

For some breast cancers, drugs called PARP inhibitors can stop cancer cells from fixing themselves. These cancer cells may then die.

Treatment Outcomes

An overall survival rate shows the percentage of people who are alive at a certain period of time after diagnosis of a disease, such as breast cancer. For example, say the 5-year overall survival rate for women with stage I breast cancer was 90%. This would mean 90% of women diagnosed with stage I breast cancer survive at least 5 years beyond diagnosis, while 10% of women would have died from any cause including breast cancer. (Most of these women would live much longer than 5 years past their diagnoses.)

ASSESS shows overall survival estimates at 5 years only, and may underestimate total lifetime benefit of these treatments.

 

Among 100 women 5 years after local treatment for breast cancer:

XX will be alive without any adjuvant therapy

X more women will be alive with the addition of Tamoxifen

X more women will be alive with the addition of TC Chemo

The addition of Olaparib showed no effect

X will have died from any cause (including breast cancer)

Please enter the patient's details to view outcomes.

ASSESS shows overall survival estimates at 5 years only, which may underestimate the total lifetime benefit of adjuvant treatments, particularly for patients with hormone receptor positive breast cancer. ASSESS should not be used for patients with inflammatory breast cancer, T4 disease, multifocal breast cancer, bilateral breast cancer, or infraclavicular/supraclavicular/internal mammary lymphadenopathy.

The health information entered into ASSESS is not saved. Technical information such as IP addresses may be stored in accordance with our standard website practices.

Developed in partnership with the Decision Support Lab at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Last reviewed December 05, 2025
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