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Joan Stephenson

JAMA. 1999;282:119.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Atlanta—After hearing the latest findings from four large clinical trials assessing the effectiveness of high-dose chemotherapy (HDC) accompanied by bone marrow or stem cell transplantation, experts remain divided on the merits of this approach for treating advanced breast cancer.

Because of intense public interest in the approach, summaries of the interim results from the studies, scheduled to be presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO), had been posted in April on the group's Web site (http://www.asco.org). The studies' preliminary findings suggested that HDC offers at least equivalent overall survival compared with conventional chemotherapy, but only one of the four, a South African study, demonstrated clear benefit (JAMA. 1999;281:1576-1578).

When this information was made public, researchers cautioned against drawing conclusions about the approach's merits because of the preliminary nature of the data. But it became clear when the . . . [Full Text of this Article]