Efficacy of current treatment methods in cancer of the breast

Results Evaluation Program, when it was organized in 1956 under the sponsorship of the National Cancer Institute, was to provide a base line for measuring progress.2 With this end i n mind, participation in the program was limited to institutions with tumor registries that had been functioning for some time. Thus, we now have a large body of data concerning the survival of patients with breast cancer from 1940 on. It is appropriate to begin this discussion with a review of what we now know about the survival of the women who were treated some 25 years ago. There are, of course, a variety of measures of the efficacy of treatment, but survival time is a basic index.