Breast cancer (BC), owing to its high prevalence, represents one of the leading causes of women’s death worldwide. Due to remarkable progress in therapy directed against this malignant neoplasm, there was an increase in the survival of affected patients and, therefore, a rise in the number of central nervous system metastases (CNSM) – up to twenty percent, located in the leptomeninges. There is not enough evidence of the therapeutic options for treating leptomeningeal metastases (LM) from breast cancer in the medical literature, and the management of these patients is complex. Even with an aggressive approach, therapeutic outcomes are uniformly disappointing due to the relentless growth of the central nervous system and systemic cancer or their lethal complications. The development of management strategies for CNSM constitutes an important clinical challenge and more prospective trials are needed to better address the impact of the available treatment on overall survival and quality of life. This article aims to provide an overview of the current established treatment for LM from BC, a rare complication of metastatic breast cancer (MBC), with high morbidity and mortality rates.
Keywords : Breast Neoplasms, neoplasm metastasis, central nervous system, methotrexate, palliative care.