High-dose therapy for primary and metastatic breast cancer

I. INTRODUCTION The utilization of high-dose chemotherapy to treat early and late metastatic and high-risk early-stage breast cancer will be discussed in this chapter. There is some enlargement on the new interest in immediate high-dose therapy, repetitive cycles of therapy, sequential high-dose therapy, and the addition of immunotherapy. The significance of marrow contamination in breast cancer, its detection, and approaches to remove tumor cells are described. The patterns and biology of hematopoietic recovery following high-dose chemotherapy and new approaches to modify and shorten the hematopoietic toxicity following high-dose therapy with recombinant growth factors and peripheral blood cells is described in other chapters in this text.