The most meaningful reward to clinicians and researchers is the absence of recurrent malignancy in their patients. While in some patients the disease will be cured by resection alone, in other similarly staged cases the disease will recur despite adequate loco regional and systemic therapies. Hence, risk assessment is a complex issue with many related or unrelated prognostic factors determining outcome. The purpose of this volume is to review some of the most relevant prognostic factors of newly diagnosed breast cancer, focusing on fea tures determining the magnitude of risk. The ultimate...

The many advances in breast cancer research, as well as the large quantity of published material, make it very difficult to gain insight into the global aspects of cancer management. To follow and understand all the new developments is becoming a major challenge. For this reason, the editors decided to bring together a group of top researchers in breast cancer to provide a comprehensive, yet readable conceptual review of the state of the art of breast cancer diagnosis and therapy. The proposal to focus the review on the quantitative assessment of the risk at diagnosis, the determination of...

Despite recent advances in adjuvant therapies of cancer, the regi- mens of postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy treatment which are presently available fail to cure the majority of cancer patients. Pre- operative (neoadjuvant) chemotherapy represents a new approach in drug scheduling, based on sound theoretical, pharmacokinetic, and experimental principles. The preoperative timing of chemotherapy before definitive sur- gery is not a minor change in the therapy of cancer. To be successful, large numbers of practitioners and their patients must participate. Substantial alterations of many...