Autologous transplantation for patients with advanced breast cancer with emphasis on bony metastasis.

The number of deaths due to breast cancer in Ontario in 1990 has been over 1700. Although hormone treatment and polychemotherapy in advanced breast cancer have been introduced many years ago for patients with metastatic breast cancer, the median survival time for this patient subpopulation, who either have hormone receptor negative tumors or have failed hormone therapy, remains between 15-18 months. Fewer than 20% of all patients are alive three years after the diagnosis of metastatic disease. Some other studies have demonstrated that dose-escalation with growth factor and/or stem cell support (from the bone marrow or peripheral blood) has shown a higher response rate including complete remissions.