Does chemotherapy work for breast cancer?

Yes: Different regimens for different cancers-that vary with the cancer's hormonal and genetic make - up. - added time of treatment if lymph nodes positive. The biggest breakthrough is with designer targeted drugs eg. Herceptin (trastuzumab) aimed at its target her 2 oncogene on selective cancers-- that has a great added response when given with chemotherapy.

It depends: Chemo treats the whole body to kill cancer cells that may have escaped from the breast tumor. Sometimes chemo is used to shrink the breast tumor before surgery (neoadjuvant chemotherapy). Breast cancers that respond best to chemotherapy are those with a high ki-67 (proliferation rate), er negative, and/or her2 positive.

Some yes, some no: Some cancers are more chemotherapy sensitive than others. Neoadjuvant therapy in appropriate patients can answer this question and provide additional prognostic information. In the adjuvant setting oncotype DX testing for er+ tumors gives additional biologic information as to which patients get most or all benefit from hormonal therapy and which may truly need/benefit from cytotoxic chemotherapy.