Abstract
Inflammatory breast cancer still has a poor prognosis despite improvements related to the introduction of neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The purpose of this study was to evaluate pathologic response rate and outcome of patients receiving high-dose chemotherapy with haematopoietic stem cell support for IBC. Seventeen consecutive patients with IBC received an association of mitoxantrone (36 mg/m2), cyclophosphamide (120 mg/kg), melphalan (140 mg/m2), with stem cell transplantation (SCT) following four to five cycles of cyclophosphamide (1000 mg/m2), doxorubicin (75 mg/m2) and 5FU (500 mg/m2). Mastectomy was performed a median of 2 months (range 1.5–45) after high-dose chemotherapy and was followed by radiotherapy. Macroscopic and microscopic pathologic complete response rates were respectively 56 and 39%. With a median follow-up of 36 months (range 17–52) 10 patients remain alive free of disease and seven patients have relapsed. Two relapses occurred in the group of patients with pathologic CR and five in the group with residual tumour. These results show that high-dose chemotherapy (HDC) with alkylating agents followed by SCT allows a very high tumour eradication in inflammatory breast cancer, suggesting a possible global benefit in progression-free survival and survival which remains to be demonstrated prospectively.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $21.58 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Viens, P., Penault-Llorca, F., Jacquemier, J. et al. High-dose chemotherapy and haematopoietic stem cell transplantation for inflammatory breast cancer: pathologic response and outcome. Bone Marrow Transplant 21, 249–254 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bmt.1701074
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bmt.1701074
Keywords
This article is cited by
-
Rôle du pathologiste dans l’évaluation histopathologique de la réponse à la chimiothérapie néoadjuvante dans le cancer du sein: mise au point
Journal Africain du Cancer / African Journal of Cancer (2010)
-
High-dose chemotherapy and autologous peripheral blood stem cell transplantation for primary breast cancer refractory to neoadjuvant chemotherapy
Bone Marrow Transplantation (2006)
-
Multivariate analysis of survival in inflammatory breast cancer: impact of intensity of chemotherapy in multimodality treatment
Bone Marrow Transplantation (2004)
-
Autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for breast cancer in Europe: critical evaluation of data from the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) Registry 1990–1999
Bone Marrow Transplantation (2003)
-
First-line high-dose sequential chemotherapy with rG-CSF and repeated blood stem cell transplantation in untreated inflammatory breast cancer: toxicity and response (PEGASE 02 trial)
British Journal of Cancer (1999)