Abstract:Objective：To investigate the shortterm effect of anthracycline(pirarubicin)based combination regimen as neoadjuvant chemotherapy for stage III primary breast cancer. Methods：For 138 patients with stage III primary breast cancer , one to four cycles of anthracyclinebased combination chemotherapy as CTF regimen were given. The clinical results, the feasibility rate of conservative breast surgery and toxic and side reaction were observed. Results：The overall response rate was 75.4%(104/138), including one case with clinical complete response(cCR), and 102 cases with clinial partial response(cPR),no change rate 23.2%, and progressive disease rate(PD) 1.4%(2/138). Seven cases received conservative breast surgery(5.1%,7/138). The cardiotoxicity was light without congestive heart failure, and the incidence of premature ventricular extrasystole(PVE) was 1.4%. The regimen resulted in mild alopecia and serious myelosuppression. The incidence of grade II myelosuppression was 27.5%, grade III 21.0%, and grade IV 7.2%.Conclusions：the shortterm effect of anthracyclinebased combination neoadjuvant chemotherapy as CTF regimen for primary breast cancer was satisfactory with little cardiotoxic effects.