Q2. What is the meaning of the study?
Interpretation 10-year gains from a one-third breast cancer mortality reduction depend on absolute risks without chemotherapy (which, for oestrogen-receptor-positive disease, are the risks remaining with appropriate endocrine therapy).
Q3. What is the syst em of the study?
10-year overall mortality diff erences paralleled breast cancer mortality diff erences, despite taxane, anthracycline, and other toxicities.
Q4. What is the resi nt of the meta-analyses?
In all meta-analyses involving taxane-based or anthracycline-based regimens, proportional risk reductions were little aff ected by age, nodal status, tumour diameter or diff erentiation (moderate or poor; few were well diff erentiated), oestrogen receptor status, or tamoxifen use.
Q5. What is the RR of the trials?
In trials adding four separate cycles of a taxane to a fi xed anthracycline-based control regimen, extending treatment duration, breast cancer mortality was reduced (RR 0·86, SE 0·04, two-sided signifi cance [2p]=0·0005).
Q6. How many cycles of anthracycline were added to a control regimen?
largely independently of age (up to at least 70 years) or the tumour characteristics currently available to us for the patients selected to be in these trials, some taxane-plus-anthracycline-based or higher-cumulative-dosage anthracycline-based regimens (not requiring stem cells) reduced breast cancer mortality by, on average, about one-third.