Register for email alerts and news feeds:
This journal | BMJ Group
rss
Postgraduate Medical Journal 1990;66:1029-1031; doi:10.1136/pgmj.66.782.1029
© 1990 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd and The Fellowship of Postgraduate Medicine.

Poor response of breast cancer to tamoxifen.

P. J. McDonald, R. Carpenter, G. T. Royle, I. Taylor

University Surgical Unit, Southampton General Hospital, UK.

Fifty eight (58) patients with early breast cancer (mean age 78.3 years) and 37 patients with advanced breast cancer (mean age 65.9 years) were treated with tamoxifen orally 20 mg daily or twice daily. The mean follow-up time was 19.1 months in the early group and 18.4 months in the late group. The drug was extremely well tolerated. All patients had cytological or histological evidence of breast cancer. A complete or partial response was found in only 36% of the patients with early breast cancer and only 13% in the advanced group. We conclude that tamoxifen was disappointing as a primary therapy in our patients. Although because of its lack of toxicity it can be seen as initial therapy for patients with breast cancer, it may have to be supplanted rapidly by other forms of therapy in the substantial proportion of patients in whom a response will not occur.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

This Article

Services
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Bookmark with

Register for free content

The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.

Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.