Introduction: In lymph node-negative, hormone-positive, and Her2-negative breast cancer patients, the benefits of adding adjuvant chemotherapy to hormonal therapy continue to be debated, especially for low to intermediate grade and small tumors.
Methods: Excluding patients with T4 disease, we retrospectively reviewed the records of patients with long-term follow-up at our center between 2003 and 2014. Among node-negative, hormone-positive and HER2-negative breast cancer patients, we compared two groups of patients: those given both chemotherapy (doxorubicin+cyclophosphamide) and hormonotherapy, and those prescribed hormonotherapy alone. The primary endpoints were progression-free (PFS) and overall survival (OS).
Results: Overall, no difference was observed between these two treatment groups in either DFS or OS. However, for both outcomes, there was a trend towards improved DFS and OS favoring the hormone-only group.
Conclusions: In selected subgroups of breast cancer patients, administering adjuvant hormonal therapy alone seems to be at least as good if not better than combining hormonotherapy and chemotherapy.