Conditions: Breast Cancer
Keywords: recurrent breast cancer stage I breast cancer stage II breast cancer stage IIIA breast cancer stage IIIB breast cancer stage IIIC breast cancer
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 162
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy use different ways to stop tumor cells from dividing so they stop growing or die. It is not yet known whether chemotherapy is effective in treating women who have undergone surgery and radiation therapy for relapsed breast cancer.

PURPOSE: Randomized phase III trial to determine the effectiveness of adjuvant chemotherapy in treating women who have undergone resection for local and/or regional relapsed breast cancer.

Detailed description:
OBJECTIVES:

Primary

* Determine the efficacy of adjuvant chemotherapy, in terms of disease-free survival, in women with radically resected loco-regional relapsed breast cancer.

Secondary

* Determine the systemic disease-free and overall survival of patients treated with this regimen.
* Determine the sites of recurrence, incidence of second (non-breast) malignancies, and causes of death without relapse of breast cancer in patients treated with this regimen.
* Determine the quality of life of patients treated with this regimen (QOL portion closed 11/13/08).

OUTLINE: This is a randomized, multicenter study. Patients are stratified according to prior chemotherapy (yes vs no), estrogen receptor (ER) positive and/or progesterone receptor (PR) positive (yes vs no), and location of recurrence (breast vs mastectomy scar/chest wall vs regional lymph nodes). Patients are randomized to 1 of 2 treatment arms.

* Arm I: Patients receive radiotherapy\* within 6 months after surgery.
* Arm II: Within 10 weeks after surgery, patients receive at least 3 courses of an adjuvant chemotherapy regimen as determined by the investigator. Patients also receive radiotherapy\* within 6 months after surgery and after the completion of chemotherapy OR integrated with chemotherapy.

NOTE: \*Patients with clear margins (R0) who received prior adjuvant radiotherapy are not required to receive further radiotherapy

Patients with ER and/or PR positive tumors also receive standard hormonal therapy.

Quality of life is assessed at baseline and at 9 and 12 months (QOL portion closed 11/13/08).

Patients are followed every 3 months for 2 years, every 6 months for 3 years, and then annually thereafter.

PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A total of 265 patients will be accrued for this study within 4 years.

Arms:
arm 1: Patients receive radiotherapy\* within 6 months after surgery. arm 2: Within 10 weeks after surgery, patients receive at least 3 courses of an adjuvant chemotherapy regimen as determined by the investigator. Patients may receive radiotherapy within 6 months after surgery and after the completion of chemotherapy OR integrated with chemotherapy.

Interventions: intervention 1: chemotherapy intervention 2: radiation therapy
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Given within 10 weeks after surgery. intervention 2: Given within 6 months after surgery

Protocol document: