Does dose-dense neoadjuvant chemotherapy have clinically significant prognostic value in breast cancer?: A meta-analysis of 3,724 patients

Purpose Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NCT) is typically the initial treatment for non-early breast cancer patients. We thereby conducted a meta-analysis to explore whether dose-dense neoadjuvant chemotherapy (ddNCT) improved the long-term prognosis of patients compared to the standard NCT regimen. Methods We compared the differences in efficacy and prognosis between patients receiving standard NCT and ddNCT. We also calculated the pooled odds ratio (OR) of pathological complete response (pCR) and the pooled hazard ratio (HR) of overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS). Results Nine randomized controlled trials involving 3,724 patients from 10 published studies were included in the meta-analysis. The pooled OR for ddNCT was 1.18 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.83-1.67, P = 0.356). A subgroup analysis in the cases with low hormone receptor expression levels showed the pCR in patients undergoing ddNCT was significantly higher than the pCR in patients undergoing standard NCT (OR = 1.36, 95% CI: 1.09-1.69, P = 0.007). There was no significant difference in DFS and OS between ddNCT and standard NCT (DFS: HR = 0.90, 95% CI: 0.79-1.02, P = 0.095; OS; HR = 0.91, 95% CI: 0.81-1.04, P = 0.160), regardless of hormone receptor expression levels. These data suggested the higher pCR rate in patients receiving ddNCT did not result in a survival benefit. Conclusions The meta-analysis demonstrated that ddNCT can significantly improve the pCR rate in patients with low hormone receptor expression levels, although patient survival was not significantly improved. The ddNCT can increase the breast-conserving rate and reduced preoperative waiting time without increasing adverse reactions. This regimen can be considered when developing an NCT plan.