A retrospective analysis of adjuvant CAF, AC-T and TAC regimens in triple negative early stage breast cancer.

Objective: To compare the effectiveness of adjuvant chemotherapy regimens in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) for which no protocol has been determined to be treatment of choice.

Methods: In this single-center retrospective trial, we analyzed the adjuvant regimens of 164 TNBC patients among 3253 breast cancer patient records. Adjuvant TAC (docetaxel, doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide), CAF (cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, 5fluorouracil), and AC-T (doxorubicin, cyclophosphamide followed by docetaxel) regimens were compared in terms of disease free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS).

Results: In terms of both DFS and OS TAC was significantly superior to AC-T in node positive TNBC. When node negative and positive patients were analyzed together, TAC was still significantly superior to AC-T in terms of DFS and OS. There was a trend favoring CAF over AC-T, however, it was only significant in terms of OS when all node negative and positive TNBC patients were incorporated together.

Conclusions: In the adjuvant setting, especially in node positive patients, TAC should be the treatment of choice in TNBC patients. CAF is probably better than AC-T in TNBC.