Primary chemotherapy with cyclophosphamide, methotrexate, and 5‐fluorouracil in operable breast carcinoma

Abstract

BACKGROUND Primary chemotherapy (PC) is becoming an accepted practice to treat large tumors to avoid mastectomies and as a surrogate of outcome. METHODS A series of 305 patients with tumors > 3 cm with T2–3N0–1M0 classification were treated with a multimodal approach that consisted of 3 courses of primary cyclophosphamide, methotrexate, and 5‐fluorouracil (CMF) followed by appropriate local treatment and 3 more courses of CMF or 4 courses of doxorubicin. Response was assessed by mammography. RESULTS The overall response rate was 48% (a 3% pathologic complete response rate). Conservative surgery was achieved in 79.64% of the patients with a low rate of local disease recurrences (5%). Toxicity was minimal. With a median follow‐up of 104 months, the 8‐year disease‐free survival (DFS) rate was 57.63% and the 8‐year overall survival (OS) was 67.65%. The DFS and OS rates for patients with a clinical response were significantly longer, i.e., 70% (P = 0.0048) and 90% (P = 0.0042), respectively. CONCLUSIONS PC with CMF was feasible. A high rate of breast‐conservative surgery was achieved. The current results stressed the value of PC to increase conservative surgery and as a predictor of outcome. Cancer 2005. © 2005 American Cancer Society.

Patient Outcomes at 5 and 10 Years After Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy for Stage II and III Breast Cancer

“…Improvements in neoadjuvant chemotherapy regimens have led to substantial improvements in patient survival outcomes in the last 20 years [14]. The data showed in the present study in a series of stage II and III breast cancer patients treated with an anthracycline and taxans backbone schemas plus antiHER in patients with Her2 positive tumors shows a clinically meaningfully difference compared to that published previously when CMF was the standard with no distinction according to HER2 [15]. The 8yDFS at that time was 57.63% compared to the 10y DFS of 77.3% presented in this paper.…”

Electrophysiological Correlates of Information Processing in Breast-Cancer Patients Treated With Adjuvant Chemotherapy

“…Although nowadays CMF-chemotherapy is largely replaced by other chemotherapy regimens as standard-adjuvant treatment in breast-cancer patients, CMF is still administered, for example as primary chemotherapy [44]. Furthermore, the separate components of the regimen, i.e.…”

HER-2/neu status and response to CMF: retrospective study in a series of operable breast cancer treated with primary CMF chemotherapy

“…The general characteristics of the series, response and survival results have been previously published (Falo et al 2005).…”