[Clinical experience of intra-arterial chemotherapy for liver metastases of breast cancer patients].

The aim of this study was to evaluate retrospectively the effect of intra-arterial chemotherapy for liver metastases of breast cancer patients. Eleven patients treated between August 1991 and July 1997 at Keio University Hospital, Tokyo, Japan, were the subjects for this study. The duration of disease-free periods after the operation ranged from 9 to 78 months (median 27 months). The site of the recurrence was the liver alone in 6 cases, and the liver and lung in 1 case, bone in 1 case, lymph nodes in 2 cases, and a local region, in 1 case. The main drugs were adriamycin (ADM) and 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), administered in a single injection or continuously via an indwelling catheter in the hepatic artery. This method had a 36% response rate, including PR in 4 cases, NC in 3 cases and PD in 4 cases. The survival duration was 1 to 19 months (median 14 months) following this treatment, and 3 to 49 months (median 17 months) after the recognition of the recurrence. The only side effects of Grade 3 or 4 were leucocytopenia or granulocytopenia and nausea. These results suggest that intra-arterial chemotherapy for liver metastases of breast cancer patients may be an effective method for the control of liver metastases with minor side effects. However, further study may be necessary to establish methods to manage the indwelling catheter and to control patients with multiple metastases of the other organs, to improve the prognosis for recurrent breast cancer patients.