Danish Breast Cancer Cooperative Group (DBCG). Present status and experience

A brief presentation is given of the Danish national program for standardized therapy of primary breast cancer within the framework of prospective randomized trials. Adjuvant systemic therapy given to high-risk patients has in preliminary studies reduced the recurrence rate in large subsets of patients and the preliminary results also indicate the possibility of improved selection of patients for different treatment modalities. It is also concluded that such a nation-wide study, although it requires extensive administrative effort, implies a number of positive effects, clinical, scientific and educational.