Breast cancer is the most commonly occurring cancer in women and the most frequent cause of female cancer death in the world as a whole .Overall, in India, its incidence ranks second, next to that of cervical cancer. But recently it has been found that it is the most common cancer in women in the metropolitan cities.[1,2] The incidence rates are increasing and a higher proportion of newly diagnosed cases are in late stage of disease resulting in an increase in morbidity. Among those who present with locally advanced disease, the subset of patients who have metastatic disease can only be offered palliative therapy and their 5 year survival rate is dismal (20%).[3] Those who have locally advanced disease but no evidence of systemic metastases, can be treated with an intent to cure. Since in our country 30 60% of patients present with advanced stage and among them almost half have non metastatic locally advanced disease, disease mortality can be greatly reduced by proper management of these patients.

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