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Adjuvant chemotherapy is ideally begun as soon as possible after breast cancer surgery — and, by extension, as soon as possible after diagnosis — to prevent the multiplication of residual tumor cells and progression of micro-metastases, if present. The American Society of Clinical Oncology and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) recommend that adjuvant chemotherapy be administered within 120 days of diagnosis of stage II or III hormone receptor-negative breast cancer in women aged <70 years. A previous report found that 87% of NCCN centers complied with this recommendation (J Clin Oncol 2009; 27(15S):6506).
To further assess the time between diagnosis of breast cancer and initiation of adjuvant chemotherapy after definitive surg…