Kinoshita Jun, Haga Shunsuke, Shimizu Tadao, Imamura Hiroshi, Watanabe Osamu, Nagumo Hiroshi, Utada Yoshihito, Okabe Toshihiko, Kimura Kiyomi, Hirano Akira, Kajiwara Tetsuro
Department of Surgery, Tokyo Women's Medical University Daini Hospital, 2-1-10 Nishi-ogu, Arakawa-ku, Tokyo 116-8567, Japan.
Breast Cancer. 2002;9(2):166-9. doi: 10.1007/BF02967582.
We describe a patient with anthracycline-pretreated and docetaxel-refractory metastatic breast cancer who achieved a complete response after third-line chemotherapy with paclitaxel. A 59-year-old woman underwent modified radical mastectomy for advanced cancer in her left breast after local arterial neoadjuvant chemotherapy with anthracycline. Postoperatively anthracycline-containing adjuvant therapy was administered. Pulmonary metastases occurred 15 months after surgery, which did not respond to 4 cycles of second-line chemotherapy with docetaxel, given at 60 mg/m(2) every 3 weeks. Therefore 210 mg/m(2) of paclitaxel was given every 3 weeks as third-line monotherapy and induced a complete response with grade 3 neutropenia and hair loss as the major adverse effects. We suggest that paclitaxel is potentially effective as third-line monotherapy for anthracycline-resistant and docetaxel-refractory metastatic breast cancer.
