Lapatinib for treatment of advanced or metastasized breast cancer: systematic review

context and objective: around 16% to 20% of women with breast cancer have advanced, metastasized breast cancer. at this stage, the disease is treatable, but not curable. the objective here was to assess the effectiveness of lapatinib for treating patients with advanced or metastasized breast cancer. design and setting: systematic review of the literature, developed at centro paulista de economia da saúde (cpes), universidade federal de s？o paulo (unifesp). method: systematic review with searches in virtual databases (pubmed, lilacs [literatura latino-americana e do caribe em ciências da saúde], cochrane library, scirus and web of science) and manual search. results: only one clinical trial that met the selection criteria was found. this study showed that lapatinib in association with capecitabine reduced the risk of cancer progression by 51% (95% confidence interval, ci: 0.34-0.71; p < 0.001), compared with capecitabine alone, without any increase in severe adverse effects. conclusion: the combination of lapatinib plus capecitabine was more effective than capecitabine alone for reducing the risk of cancer progression. further randomized clinical trials need to be carried out with the aim of assessing the effectiveness of lapatinib as monotherapy or in association for first-line or second-line treatment of advanced breast cancer.