HE QUESTION is often raised as to whether T improved surgery and radiotherapy and the advent of hormonal treatment have resulted in a prolongation of life for breast cancer patients and whether these factors have influenced to any extent the palliative success of the treatment.
Haagensen and Stout,? Kaae,12 McWhirter,l7 Crile,3 Lewison,l5 Watson,25 and many other investigators have evaluated their therapeutic results in unselected series of breast cancer patients. They calculated 5-and 10-year survival rates from first clinical presentation. T h e prognosis of patients with recurrent and metastatic disease was investigated by Shimkin et a1.22 T h e present study deals with a similar problem: the life expectancy of advanced breast cancer patients and the effect of various hormonal treatments on the course of the disease.
MATERIAL
T h e present series comprises 338 female patients, 268 with recurrent disease (the term "recurrent" is used as reference to reactivation of the disease either by local recurrence or distant metastases) and 70 with inoperable cancer, who were seen at our institute during the years 1934-1956. Patients are referred to our outpatient department from centers all over the country for consultation in diagnosis and treatment. Many of these patients are seen once only, others several times, and because of this, they have had to be excluded from our investigation owing to incomplete records. Otherwise, patients without selection who showed objective signs of recurrent disease, are included in this study.
Of the 268 patients with recurrent disease, 239 underwent radical mastectomy as the first