High-dose chemotherapy accompanied by infusions of blood stem cells apparently offers no survival advantage over standard chemotherapy for women with breast cancer.
A study by researchers at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam included 97 women with breast cancer that had spread to the lymph nodes. After three courses of chemotherapy and surgery, 81 women whose tumors responded to therapy by shrinking or not growing larger were randomized to receive a fourth course of standard chemotherapy or a high-dose regimen and blood stem cells.
After more than four years of follow-up, cancer returned in 19 high-dose patients, 19 who received conventional therapy, and 11 of the 16 who were not in the randomized portion of the trial. Of these women, 29 died of breast cancer: 10 in the high-dose group, 11 in the conventional therapy group, and eight nonrandomized patients.
"Since high-dose adjuvant therapy did not even yield . . . [Full Text of this Article]
