The aim of this paper was to identify if a longer course of chemotherapy was better than a short course. The authors look at how long patients survived with metastatic breast cancer or with no further cancer progression.
Breast cancer is called metastatic when it has spread from the breast to other parts of the body such as the lymph nodes, lungs, bones and brain. Chemotherapy is one of the most common treatments for metastatic breast cancer. The type of chemotherapy treatment used depends on various things including the patient’s age, health and the type of breast cancer.
The article examined data from 2269 patients with metastatic breast cancer, pooled from 11 clinical trials. All of the studies in this review compared different chemotherapy durations (number of cycles of chemotherapy). These comparisons included:
- A fixed duration of therapy (number of cycles) compared to continuous cycles until there was no further disease progression.
- A fixed duration of therapy compared to a larger number of chemotherapy cycles.
- A fixed duration of therapy compared to the same treatment followed immediately by more cycles with a different drug.
Results showed that patients survived longer without further progression of their cancer when they had more cycles of chemotherapy. This suggests that it is beneficial to have continuous chemotherapy as long as the side effects are tolerated. This finding is not specific to one type of chemotherapy.
The main limitations of this article are the small number of trials included in the analysis and the fact that some of the drugs used are no longer available (some trials were performed a long time ago).
Published By :
Journal of clinical oncology
Date :
Jun 01, 2011
