LH-RH Agonists for the Treatment of Breast Cancer

In a momentous discovery arising out of his research, in 1896 Beatson showed that the growth of some breast cancers could be interrupted by oophorectomy (1). He operated on three women, one of whom clearly responded, achieving a remission of 42-mo duration. Interestingly, the response rate in many series since that time has remained close to one in three. Oophorectomy or ovarian irradiation went in and out of fashion, but by the 1960s it was accepted as the standard treatment for premenopausal women with advanced breast cancer.