Publisher's Synopsis
This book brings together major papers presented during the 3rd International Congress on Neo-adjuvant Chemotherapy. It offers a panoramic view of the international experience of neo-adjuvant chemotherapy that is intended to help direct the reader towards better and more effective therapeutic strategies.;Cancer treatment can be improved by metabolic manipulation (PFL), intensifying the doses, using growth factors and autologous grafts, increasing the concentration at the tumour site by intra-arterial injection (a technique particularly used for gastrointestinal tumours), and combining chemotherapy with biological response modifiers. Neo-adjuvant chemotherapy has been used successfully in the treatment of upper respiratory/gastrointestinal tumours, in breast tumours and lung cancers, particularly epidermoid carcinomas. It also allows less mutilating forms of treatment in oesophageal carcinomas and generally in epidermoid carcinomas, particularly invasive tumours of the head and neck, the vulva and the anus. In bladder tumours neo-adjuvant chemotherapy has an important role to play in local therapy.;Neo-adjuvant chemotherapy was introduced by Professor Claude Jacquillat during the 1980s. When started as soon as the diagnosis has been established by drill biopsy, according to the tumoral sites, this treatment facilitates tumoral reduction and thus improves the efficacy of local control measures such as radiotherapy or surgery. Finally, it is responsible for an improvement in relapse-free survival. This book covers international results obtained from the relatively new treatment strategy.
