Bilateral adrenalectomy in treatment of disseminated breast cancer

Forty-three patients underwent bilateral adrenalectomy for advanced breast cancer at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania from 1960 to 1974. Fourteen patients (32 per cent) experienced an objective remission. There was no difference in the initial free interval between the responders and nonresponders. Premenopausal patients who improved after surgical castration or androgen therapy and postmenopausal patients who responded to estrogen therapy and its subsequent withdrawal had a greater response to adrenalectomy. Twenty-three of the forty-three patients who underwent bilateral adrenalectomy had evidence of metastatic involvement in at least one of the excised adrenal glands. Results show that patients who responded to previous therapy had a longer survival after adrenalectomy.