Pilot Study on Adjuvant Chemotherapy and Hormonal Therapy for Irradiated Inoperable Breast Cancer

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Abstract
Adjuvant therapy for breast cancer has produced encouraging preliminary results in recent years [1, 2, 5]. Inoperable patients having a very poor prognosis were selected for a pilot study employing intensive chemotherapy. Inoperability has been well-defined in our institute since 1956 [3, 6]. Patients with inoperable breast cancer treated by locoregional irradiation show a 10-year survival of less than 5%. Distant metastasis is generally the cause of death. This group of patients seemed highly eligible for adjuvant systemic treatment since virtually all patients have occult metastatic disease. It might be expected that improvement both of the relapse-free interval and the overall survival should be apparent rather quickly. The pilot study was started in 1975.