No standard monotherapy or combination palliative chemotherapy currently exists for patients with advanced breast cancer pretreated with anthracyclines and taxanes. In this systematic review we assess the current knowledge on the efficacy and safety of palliative single-agent chemotherapy drugs--capecitabine, vinorelbine, gemcitabine, and liposomal doxorubicin--commonly used in daily clinical practice. We identified 22 studies, of which ten investigated capecitabine, nine investigated vinorelbine, three investigated gemcitabine, and one investigated liposomal doxorubicin. The greatest amount of information was available for capecitabine and vinorelbine. These two drugs showed good efficacy. The disease control rate differed significantly between the four drugs, which is relevant in terms of how well tumour symptoms can be improved and whether quality of life can be maintained or even improved. To obtain more evidence of the efficacy and safety of chemotherapeutic agents used in this pretreated population of advanced breast cancer patients, randomised comparisons of the various drugs, as monotherapy and in combination with targeted agents, are needed.
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