Abstract
Common sense and experience would dictate that delay in treatment would worsen the prognosis. Nevertheless, one of the underlying currents in the literature is that treatment has little effect on the ultimate survival in the patients with breast cancer. In fact, statistics can be quoted to support the view that delay in treatment may actually improve prognosis. This contradicts the axiom that early diagnosis and early treatment result in better cure rates. Let us examine the evidence. The first discordant note was sounded in 1932 by Lewis and Reinhoff<sup>19</sup>who noted that the average length of survival after operation increased with the delay prior to surgery. This conclusion becomes even more remarkable when one notes that survival rates and the average duration of survival are calculated from the date of surgery rather than from the onset of symptoms (Table 5). For delays of more than three years the survival
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