Adjuvant therapy for breast cancer.

After several decades in which the scope and intensity of regional therapies increased, without a corresponding increase in cure rates, attention has turned to systemic treatments. Adjuvant therapy for carcinoma is use in an attempt to destroy micrometastases thus preventing the development of clinical metastases. Initial results have been encouraging and an understanding of tumor cell kinetics has led to the use of better schedules and combinations of drugs that have substantially decreased the probability or treatment failure and prolonged survival compared with the results of operation alone.