[Immune competence before and after curative radiotherapy in breast cancer (author's transl)]

The level of non-specific immune response was evaluated in 409 operable breast cancer patients by a battery of classical tests performed at least before and after treatment. We propose a synthetic classification of the various tests into 5 categories (from I 1 to I 5) of growing pejorative weight for a rapid and better understanding between the laboratory and the clinicians and also for overall comparison in time. With this type of evaluation the percentage of patients exhibiting depressed immune response was 14 per cent initially and rose to 39 per cent at the end of irradiation. Six months later, however, only 3 per cent of the patients had an immune assessment lower than the initial level. The pronounced immune depression observed by other authors concerned mainly patients having undergone post-operative irradiation after removal of the breast. The curative treatments used here in the hope of avoiding radical breast surgery was performed under much different ballistic, biological and psychological conditions which should be taken into account before condemning the dangers of this method.