- It's hard to answer the question fully without knowing more details. ie., her age, whether or not this is for metastatic cancer or adjuvant chemotherapy (given to prevent cancer recurrance) and whether or not her cancer cells have receptors for estrogen on their surface.

In a patient with metastatic breast cancer, chemotherapy and hormonal therapy are both capable of inducing remissions, prolonging life, and making the quality of life better. If the cancer involves the lungs, the liver and/or lacks receptors for female hormones; chemotherapy would be the preferred treatment. If the cancer involves the skin or bones, we tend to use hormones and hormone blockers (such as Nolvadex). These hormones are relatively nontoxic and well tolerated.

Adjuvant chemotherapy/hormonal therapy is given after surgery to decrease the chance of disease recurrance. The chances of disease recurrance range from 10% (small tumors, no lymph node involvement, "good histology") to 70% (aggressive histology, multiple lymph nodes involved, etc.) Use of chemotherapy decreases the chance of recurrance by 25 to 35%; and is usually only four to six months of treatment. Hormonal therapies (Nolvadex/tamoxifen in particular) have similar efficacies in tumors with hormone receptors, and require five years or more of use. There is a small risk of endometrial cancer from Nolvadex and I usually arrange for patients on this drug to have a yearly pelvic examination. In high risk patients, common practice is now to use both Nolvadex and chemotherapy.

Note, over the last five years a large number of medications have been released to decrease the side effects of chemotherapy. For mor information, check out www.cancernet.com or www.oncolink.upenn.edu

-Depends upon the stage of her disease. Chemo can make a sizeable difference in some patients in the form of adjuvant therapy. You need to give more information to get a useful answer... Have you visited the breast cancer resource www sites?