Research prototype • not a certified medical device

NEOCOPING Breast Cancer Treatment Trade-off Calculator

Personalized estimates of post-chemotherapy quality of life and mortality-risk reduction, grounded in a peer-reviewed Bayesian model.

About this tool & disclaimer

This is an independent, non-commercial research and educational prototype. It is not a certified medical device and does not replace advice from your own oncology team. Estimates describe patterns in groups of people with early breast cancer (stages I–III) and cannot predict what will happen to any one person.

The underlying quality-of-life model is a Bayesian Constrained Partial Proportional Odds (CPPO) model reproducing published results from the NEOCOPING study: Carmona-Bayonas A et al., npj Breast Cancer 2021;7:92, doi:10.1038/s41523-021-00296-8. Because the original patient-level NEOCOPING data are not publicly available, this tool is fitted on synthetic data calibrated to match the study's published aggregate effects, not on the original patient records. Mortality-reduction figures come from separate published survival literature, not from the NEOCOPING cohort itself.

This project has no commercial sponsor and no conflicts of interest to disclose. Source code is openly available for review.

NEOCOPING

A quality-of-life trade-off calculator for early breast cancer treatment.

Patient Clinician
Back to start

Plan your estimate

Answer a few questions to see a personalized treatment trade-off.

Step 1 of 5

Starting point

Tell us about your age and how you have been feeling recently.

Your age helps account for how treatment effects can differ at different stages of life.
Quality of life means how you feel and function day to day, including your physical health, energy, mood, and ability to do usual activities. Thinking about the past week, choose a score from 0 for very poor to 100 for excellent. This is your view of your own wellbeing; there is no right answer.
65 / 100

Your treatment plan

Select the operation discussed with your surgical team. A mastectomy removes the breast. Breast-conserving surgery removes the cancer and a small area around it while keeping most of the breast. This can be updated later if your plan changes.
Chemotherapy uses medicines that travel through the bloodstream to destroy cancer cells. A regimen is the particular combination of medicines and schedule recommended by your oncology team. This estimate does not recommend one treatment over another.

Cancer and lymph nodes

Stage describes the size of a cancer and whether it has reached nearby lymph nodes or other parts of the body. Use the stage your care team gave you after tests or surgery. This model was developed for stages I through III; it cannot provide a reliable estimate for stage IV.
A sentinel biopsy removes a few selected nodes. A full axillary dissection removes more nodes from under the arm.
This is about your own sense of risk, not a medical prediction. Move the slider to reflect how concerned you feel today.
45%

How are you feeling?

These optional check-ins personalize the estimate.

How much has tiredness made daily life harder during the past week? 0 is not at all and 100 is extremely.
50 / 100
How much has pain made daily life harder during the past week? 0 is not at all and 100 is extremely.
50 / 100
How much worry, sadness, or stress have you experienced during the past week? 0 is not at all and 100 is extremely.
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Your estimate

This estimate describes patterns seen in groups of people. It cannot tell exactly what will happen to one person and should be discussed with your care team.

NEOCOPING Trade-off Calculator

Predicts global health status upon completion of adjuvant chemotherapy in early breast cancer.

Back to start
Effect on QoL is nonlinear — both younger (<40) and older (>70) patients tend to experience greater decline, especially with mastectomy.
Mastectomy is associated with significantly lower post-treatment QoL across all score thresholds vs breast-conserving surgery (BCS). Effect is largest at age extremes.
Planned adjuvant regimen. In the source study, regimen type had a modest effect on global health status compared to surgery and perceived recurrence risk.
Additional prognosis and treatment data These inputs document factors used in modern breast-cancer risk assessment. They do not change the core chemotherapy estimate unless a validated joint model is integrated. Largest invasive tumor measurement from imaging or pathology. Number of lymph nodes containing cancer, from pathology. How different the cancer cells look under a microscope. Whether cancer cells use estrogen or progesterone signals to grow. Whether the cancer has an excess of the HER2 growth-promoting protein. A validated genomic assay result, such as Oncotype DX or MammaPrint. Radiotherapy after breast-conserving surgery or after mastectomy is a separate local-treatment decision.
Pathological stage at surgery. Stage III shows ~81% posterior probability of additional QoL harm vs Stage II, though effect size is small.
Full axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) vs sentinel node biopsy. ALND carries ~79% posterior probability of harm on QoL.
The patient’s subjective sense of their recurrence risk after meeting the oncologist. The strongest psychological predictor of post-treatment QoL — often rated “high” even at Stage I.
45%
EORTC QLQ-C30 items 29–30: “Overall health” and “Overall quality of life” in the past week, each scored 1–7 then mapped to 0–100. The most predictive single variable.
65 / 100
Optional symptom check-in Patient-reported burden inspired by QLQ-C30 domains. Optional in this MVP.
50 / 100
50 / 100
50 / 100
⚠️ Stage IV is outside this model's scope. The source study enrolled stages I–III (resected, non-metastatic) only. QoL predictions and mortality figures shown for Stage IV are extrapolations and should not be used clinically.
Optional follow-up feedback No personal identifiers are collected. This supports scheduled model recalibration.
Model update controls
Run a manual recalibration using accumulated de-identified feedback.
Calibration summary
Check readiness and current calibration performance.

Understanding your results

Quality of life (QoL): Quality of life is a broad measure of how you feel and manage everyday life. It includes physical wellbeing, emotional wellbeing, energy, and usual activities. Scores run from 0 to 100. A higher score means better overall wellbeing, not a less serious cancer.

The score and likely range: The main score is the middle estimate for people with similar information. The likely range shows how much people can differ from one another. It is not a promise or a personal diagnosis; experiences of treatment vary.

The bars in the QoL chart: Each bar shows how often a score may occur among similar people. Taller bars mean that score is more common in the estimate. Together, the bars show that there is more than one possible experience after treatment.

Mortality reduction: This estimates how chemotherapy may reduce deaths from breast cancer over the next 10 years for a group of 100 similar people. For example, a 6 percentage-point reduction means about 6 fewer breast cancer deaths per 100 people compared with not having that chemotherapy. It does not state your personal chance of dying, surviving, or having cancer return.

Why your own situation can differ: Your care team uses other information not included here, such as the cancer's hormone and HER2 markers, genetic features, other treatments, and your general health. They can explain what the group estimate may mean for you.

Model: Carmona-Bayonas A et al. npj Breast Cancer 2021;7:92. doi:10.1038/s41523-021-00296-8  •  Study population: early breast cancer, stages I–III, n=219, adjuvant chemotherapy only.