Clinical characteristics of patients with metastatic breast cancer with complete remission following systemic treatment.
BACKGROUND
Patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) have variable clinical courses. The purpose was to describe the clinical characteristics of MBC patients with complete remissions (CR) following systemic treatment.


METHODS
We analyzed 315 consecutive MBC patients treated with several types of systemic treatments at the National Cancer Center Hospital between January 1988 and December 1993.


RESULTS
The median survival time (MST) and median progression-free survival were 28.0 and 17.1 months, respectively. Forty patients were defined as 'first-CR' following initial or second-line systemic treatment and the majority of them had a good performance status, low number of metastatic sites and low incidence of liver involvement. Nine of 40 patients with first-CR continued progression-free 5 years after beginning systemic treatments. The major sites of metastasis were the lung and bone and there were no cases with liver metastasis. Five patients received standard doxorubicin-containing combination chemotherapy with or without tamoxifen. Two of these nine patients remain progression free in first-CR. Three of them remained in first-CR after 5 years and died of progressive breast cancer and two others died of unrelated causes. Two patients relapsed after obtaining a first-CR for at least 5 years and remain alive with active metastatic disease. The MST and median progression-free survival of nine patients were 10.6 and 9.0 years, respectively. These nine patients represented 22.5% of all first-CR patients and 3.2% of the total patients.


CONCLUSIONS
Although MBC is commonly recognized to be an incurable disease, a small percentage of patients clearly are alive and progression free for prolonged periods after initiation of systemic treatments.
Yamamoto
N
N
Department of Medical Oncology, National Cancer Center Hospital, Tokyo, Japan.
Katsumata
N
N
Watanabe
T
T
Omuro
Y
Y
Ando
M
M
Narabayashi
M
M
Adachi
I
I
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000971:Antineoplastic Combined Chemotherapy Protocols / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D001859:Bone Neoplasms / Q000556:secondary; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology*; D003520:Cyclophosphamide / Q000008:administration & dosage; D018572:Disease-Free Survival; D004317:Doxorubicin / Q000008:administration & dosage; D005260:Female; D005472:Fluorouracil / Q000008:administration & dosage; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000556:secondary; D008207:Lymphatic Metastasis; D008875:Middle Aged; D012074:Remission Induction; D016019:Survival Analysis; D013629:Tamoxifen / Q000008:administration & dosage
D013629:Tamoxifen; D004317:Doxorubicin; D003520:Cyclophosphamide; D005472:Fluorouracil