BACKGROUND Interest in the use of preoperative systemic treatment in the management of breast cancer has increased because such neoadjuvant therapy appears to reduce the extent of local surgery required. We compared the clinical end points of patients with breast cancer treated preoperatively with systemic therapy (neoadjuvant therapy) and of those treated postoperatively with the same regimen ...

More than 429 000 European women are diagnosed with breast cancer annually [1]. The vast majority of women present with early-stage disease and receive adjuvant systemic therapy following surgical resection. Although rates of breast cancerrelated mortality have continued to decline in Europe since the early 1990s, many women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer will die due to disease recur...

Breast cancer is the most common cause of cancer and cancer death worldwide. Although most patients present with localized breast cancer and may be rendered disease-free with local therapy, distant recurrence is common and is the primary cause of death from the disease. Adjuvant systemic therapies are effective in reducing the risk of distant and local recurrence, including endocrine therapy, a...

BACKGROUND The National Institutes of Health (NIH) consensus statement recommends adjuvant therapy for early breast cancer irrespective of age. However, the actual use of such therapy is not well documented among women over 65 years of age. METHODS We studied the frequency of use of adjuvant therapy and report the receipt of this therapy among 200 women aged > or = 65 years diagnosed with ear...

PURPOSE Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is a rare cutaneous malignancy. Because of the absence of randomized studies, the real benefit of adjuvant radiation therapy in MCC is unclear. The aim of this study was to better define the role of adjuvant radiation therapy in the management of MCC. METHODS The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) survey from the National Cancer Institute wa...