الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 114 |  |  |
| | | from | 114 | | |
Abstract
Breast cancer (BC) is one of the most prevalent malignancies in women in almost all countries. Approximately 5–10% of newly diagnosed patients with breast cancer have meta¬static disease at diagnosis and 20% to 30% patients with early-stage breast cancer will eventually progress to metastatic disease. Metronomic chemotherapy (MC) is chronic administration of chemotherapy at low, minimally toxic doses on a frequent schedule of administration, with no prolonged drug-free breaks that leads to antitumour activity. The advantage of this strategy is lower toxicity and risk of emergence of drug-resistant tumor cells than in conventional administration. Capecitabine (Xeloda) an oral prodrug of fluorouracil, has been shown to be efficacious as adjuvant chemotherapy in patients with gastrointestinal cancer. However, its efficacy in patients with breast cancer is unclear. The objective of this study was to evaluate the tolerability and efficacy of metronomic capecitabine as an adjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer patients who were attending the Clinical oncology and Nuclear medicine department at Suez Canal University Hospital.
A randomized controlled trial design was adopted. A total of 180 patients with invasive breast cancer were randomy assigned to either metronomic Capecitabine group or the standard of care group, 90 patients each. Then, all patients were followed up for two years or until disease progression or deaths, which ever was longer.
The main findings of the study were that the Metronomic Capecitabine regimen was significantly associated with better disease-free survival than the standard treatment while overall survival was not significantly different between the study groups. However, the risk for either disease-progression or mortality among patients who received Capecitabine regimen was significantly less than the risk among patients on the standard treatment. Furthermore, Ki67 index, amd hormonal receptors status were significantly associated with disease-free survival, while high-