Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether there has been a change of policy on how adjuvant bisphosphonates are offered to patients for the management of breast cancer treatment in the last 12 months.

There has been no change of policy on how adjuvant bisphosphonates should be offered to patients for the management of breast cancer since the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance on early and locally advanced breast cancer: diagnosis and management was updated in July 2018.

The use of adjuvant bisphosphonates was one of the key areas that was covered in the update. NICE’s updated recommendations can be found at the following link:

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng101/chapter/Recommendations#bisphosphonate-therapy

The guideline recommends bisphosphonates as adjuvant therapy for postmenopausal women with node positive invasive breast cancer and for postmenopausal women with node negative breast cancer.