[A prospective randomized study of intra-arterial infusion chemotherapy in the treatment of advanced breast cancer].

A prospective randomized study among 3 preoperative modalities, which consisted of intra-arterial infusion chemotherapy (I.A.), systemic chemotherapy (I.V.) and nontreated group, was carried out on 70 patients with advanced breast cancer. The results were as follows. (1) The response rate of primary lesions to I.A. (68.2%) was significantly higher than that of I.V. (37.5%). (2) The post-operative survival of responders (CR, PR) was better than those of non-responders (NC). (3) The frequency of side effects was similar in both I.A. and I.V. groups. (4) There was no difference among survival rates of 3 groups. We confirmed that I.A. was an efficacious neoadjuvant therapy in terms of down staging of advanced breast cancer.