Neoadjuvant versus adjuvant systemic treatment for breast cancer: a meta-analysis

Background: Interest in the use of preoperative systemic treatment in the management of breast cancer has increased because such neoadjuvant therapy appears to reduce the extent of local surgery required. We compared the clinical end points of patients with breast cancer treated pre-operatively with systemic therapy (neoadjuvant therapy) and of those treated postoperatively with the same regimen (adjuvant therapy) in a meta-analysis of randomized trials. Methods: We evaluated nine randomized studies, including a total of 3946 patients with breast cancer, that compared neoadjuvant therapy with adjuvant therapy regardless of what additional surgery and/or radiation treatment was used. Fixed and random effects methods were used to combine data. Primary outcomes were death, disease progression, dis-tant disease recurrence, and loco-regional disease recurrence