Adjuvant therapy of breast cancer.
About 180,000 American women will be diagnosed with early stage breast cancer during 1993. In many of these patients breast cancer is a systemic disease at diagnosis and thus not curable by local treatment alone. The development of optimal forms of systemic adjuvant therapy has been a major area of research for more than 30 years. The two most widely employed types of adjuvant therapy, cytotoxic chemotherapy and tamoxifen, have been shown to improve relapse-free and overall survival in certain patient subsets. This review highlights recent advances in adjuvant therapy of early stage breast cancer and discusses current treatment guidelines.
Davidson
N E
NE
Johns Hopkins Oncology Center, Baltimore, Maryland 21231.
Abeloff
M D
MD
D000970:Antineoplastic Agents / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology; D017024:Chemotherapy, Adjuvant; D015975:Consensus Development Conferences, NIH as Topic; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008207:Lymphatic Metastasis; D011379:Prognosis; D015996:Survival Rate; D014481:United States
D000970:Antineoplastic Agents