High-dose chemotherapy with autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in inflammatory breast cancer

Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is a rare type of invasive breast cancer with only about 5% of all breast cancer cases. However, it is one of the most aggressive forms of invasive breast cancer. It frequently presents with regional lymph node involvement at presentation and is followed by rapid disease progression to distant involvement from micrometastasis in the natural course of disease. With locoregional treatment only, long-term survival is less than 5% [1]. With the addition of systemic cytotoxic chemotherapy together with locoregional treatment, the long term survival has improved significantly but still at the range of 30—50% [2]. Inflammatory breast cancer being a systemic disease and also a chemo-sensitive disease, it makes sense that systemic cytotoxic therapy is the main force of treatment. The main issue is how to improve the systemic treatment to achieve a better survival outcome. One way to improve the systemic treatment is through the concept of dose intensity of cytotoxic chemotherapy.