title: Anthracycline pretreated patients: who is who in the chemotherapy choice of relapsed breast cancer?
abstract: During the last years, a strong trend towards excluding anthracyclines from the first-line chemotherapy (CT) of relapsed breast cancer (RBC) has been noticed. This trend is based on the concept of previous exposure of the tumor on the same drugs in the adjuvant setting. Consequently, some guidelines and experts recommend the avoidance of using these compounds for RBC under those circumstances, while the taxanes became the first treatment option. This article gives detailed references about the lack of correlation between the type of adjuvant chemotherapy (including anthracyclines), and the clinical outcome of patients treated with front-line anthracyclines for RBC. It also addresses the weakness of this rationale based on recent translational research data and comments on the fact that anthracyclines could represent the best treatment option for some subcategories of patients with RBC. Concluding, this new trend seems more empirical than evidence-based, and clarification of this issue is warranted.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Oncology Bucharest, Department of Medical Oncology, Bucharest, Romania.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dediu
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Alexandru
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Median