High-Dose Chemotherapy plus Autologous Bone Marrow Transplantation for Metastatic Breast Cancer

In this issue of the Journal, Stadtmauer et al. present the results of a clinical trial in which conventional-dose chemotherapy was compared with high-dose chemotherapy plus autologous bone marrow transplantation (hematopoietic stem-cell rescue) in patients with metastatic breast cancer. 1 In this trial, 553 women with previously untreated metastatic or locally recurrent breast cancer were initially treated with conventional multidrug chemotherapy; patients who had a response, according to predefined objective criteria, were then randomly assigned to receive either maintenance chemotherapy at standard doses or high-dose chemotherapy plus an autologous bone marrow transplant. In this randomization phase, a total of 199 women . . .