One of the general rules in oncologist is that we typically use our most effective treatments first, and often early, though there are certainly exceptions. Women with metastatic breast cancer may have a higher response rate by receiving combination chemotherapy than single agent chemo, but when a gentle single drug chemotherapy or hormone therapy option will do very well and provide fewer side effects, that’s usually the approach we recommend until bigger guns are needed.

Back when I first started doing this, one of my earliest posts (see here) was on the question of whether EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) (see introduction to this work in prior post).

Please Note: New Treatments Have Emerged Since this Original Post

In a recent post, I described the approval of taxotere as a second-line chemotherapy with a modest but survival benefit for patients previously treated with one line of chemo, usually a platinum-based doublet.