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Neoadjuvant, or preoperative, therapy is used for both operable and inoperable (inflammatory, locally advanced) breast cancer. For operable breast cancer, preoperative therapy has been evaluated in several randomized clinical trials, and its overall effect has been similar to that of postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy. Data from clinical trials also suggest that the extent of pathologic response to preoperative chemotherapy correlates with overall survival (J Clin Oncol 2003; 21:4165). In other words, patients who achieve pathologic complete response (pCR) to preoperative therapy tend to have the longest overall survival. However, evaluating clinical trial data in this field is difficult, because investigators have defined pCR in many diff…