Delivering bad news to patients being evaluated for and diagnosed with breast cancer requires a unique blend of medical knowledge, compassion, and sensitivity. Although many of the techniques involved are intuitive, one can enhance these skills by incorporating a few simple concepts into the patient encounter. By combining these with an understanding of appropriate responses to possible patient reactions to the news, one can create a more effective groundwork for the patient’s recovery on both physical and emotional levels.

Angiogenesis, or new vessel formation, plays a key role in the process of tumor growth and metastasis in breast cancer. Recent large phase-III trials (E2100 and AVADO) demonstrate the clinical utility of bevacizumab in combination with front-line taxane-based chemotherapy in patients with metastatic breast cancer, leading to its recent approval in the United States and Europe. Several other anti-angiogenic strategies against vascular endothelial growth factor are in various phases of clinical development. This paper reviews the data on bevacizumab in metastatic breast cancer and other anti-angiogenic strategies on development in breast cancer.