Evaluation of adverse events at adjuvant chemotherapy used in breast cancer that included antracyclines and taxanes

Breast cancer constitutes one fourth of all female cancers. Breast cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death after pulmonary and colorectal cancer. So, recently there has been made many studies concerning the adjuvant therapies. Since breast cancer is a disease that can be cured, to obtain cures by increasing the intensity of the drug doses in adjuvant therapies is attempted. Increase in the dose intensity has brought some side effects impairing the life quality of the patient. We studied the side effects associated with the adjuvant therapy combinations containing anthracycline-taxane which is the most frequently used recently in the breast cancer.In the study, the files of one hundred patients with diagnosis of breast cancer were investigated retrospectively. Sixty of the patients (60%) were premenopausal and 40 of them (40%) were postmenopausal (40%). Seventy three patients (73%) were ER(+), seventy five patients (75%) were PR(+) and thirty one patients were cerb B2(+). Fifty of the patients (50%) had 1 to 3 involved lymphatic nodes, thirty patients had (30%) had 4 to 9 involved lymphatic nodes, fourteen patients (14%) had ?10 involved lymphatic nodes and six patients had no involved lymphatic node. It was noticed that the patients without involved lymphatic nodes were also ER(-). Furthermore, it was observed that the these patients had one or more than one higher risk factors such as the tumor dimension greater than 2 cm, being in higher degree, being cerb B2(+), being younger than 35 years old. While 31 of the patients received intensive therapy, 69 of them received standard therapy.In our study, although the neutropenia ratio was higher in the standard group, the febrile neutropenia threatening the life was developed again in patients belonging to standard group. It was also seen that there was also an increase in the development of neuropathy together with the increase in dose intensity and that all of the patients in which neuropathy was developed were receiving paclitaxel. Moreover, it was demonstrated that the nail changes seen with docetaxel in other studies can be also seen with paclitaxel when dose intensity is increased.In our country there is no study concerning the comparison the side effects associated with either intensive or standard regimens containing anthracycline-taxane. Since the improvement in the survival ratios obtained with the introduction of dose-intensive combination into the therapy will cause more use of these treatments, to emphasize the importance of following carefully the side effects and that of sharing this with the patient was aimed in this study.