Chemotherapy Report at San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium on December 13, 2007
A Time report on the ineffectiveness of high-dose chemotherapy followed by a stem cell transplant for breast cancer was published following a report at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium on December 13, 2007. BCRF's scientific director Larry Norton, MD, was quoted in the article, written by Time senior reporter Alice Park. "This report should absolutely, definitively and for all time close the door on this treatment," said Norton.
Long preferred in the 1980s and 1990s, the treatment was thought to extend the life of breast cancer patients by giving the highest doses of chemotherapy drugs followed by a transplant of the patient’s own stem cells to rebuild her immune system. The outcomes following treatment were reviewed by a group of researchers led by biostatistician Donald Berry of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Survival data on more than 6,000 patients with all types of breast cancer were analyzed, Surprising even the researchers looking at the data, none of the women who had received the grueling and painful treatment survived longer than women who did not undergo the treatment. (Some of the women on the treatment experienced a few more months of remission, however.)
The study's lead author, Berry, and Norton said that there is a value in learning about the ineffectiveness of this treatment. Individualized factors such as choice of chemotherapy drug and timing of treatment are likely more important than the size of the dose, they said in Time.
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