Initial chemoimmunotherapy in inflammatory carcinoma of the breast.

Fifteen patients with clinical primary inflammatory carcinoma of the breast were treated with initial chemoimmunotherapy between September 1974 and May 1977. The protocol was a combination of Adriamycin, vincristine, 5-fluorouracil, and methotrexate given by I.V. push, and melphalan per os. Thermographic cooling was taken as the criterion of operability. Initial chemotherapy was resumed after surgery up to a total of ten courses and followed by maintenance chemotherapy for a minimum of one year. Immunotherapy using I-BCG-F. Pasteur was routinely associated with the antimitotic agents. The median survival for our 15 patients has not been reached and exceeds 56 months. These results correspond to an obvious therapeutic benefit compared with recent attempts in which similar chemoimmunotherapy protocols were used; this benefit seems to be the consequence of the adaptation of the length of initial chemotherapy to the data given by plate-thermography.