Epirubicin followed by cyclophosphamide, methotrexate and 5-fluorouracil versus paclitaxel followed by epirubicin and vinorelbine in patients with high-risk operable breast cancer.

Objective: Breast cancer patients with >3 involved nodes (N+) have a poor outcome. Chemotherapy (CT), alone or combined with endocrine therapy (ET) in hormone receptor (HOR)-positive patients, is the standard for these women. However, there are still questions surrounding the optimal adjuvant CT regimen.

Phase III randomized multicenter study on the effects of adjuvant CMF in patients with node-negative, rapidly proliferating breast cancer: twelve-year results and retrospective subgroup analysis.

The randomized multicenter study on rapidly proliferating breast cancer, assessed according to thymidine labelling index (TLI), was activated at the end of the 1980s. The present work investigated whether and to what degree the short-term advantages observed from adjuvant CMF (cyclophosphamide, methotrexate, 5-fluorouracil) were maintained at a longer follow-up. Two hundred and eighty-one patients with node-negative and high TLI tumors were randomized to receive six cycles of CMF or no further treatment.