**3.3 Chemotherapy**

The use of cytotoxic chemotherapy, in both advanced and early stage of breast cancer, has made significant progress in the last decade (Hassan et al., 2010). Chemotherapy is a systemic breast cancer therapy and compared to surgery and radiation therapy, it has one advantage. It is able to eliminate cancer cells throughout the entire body. Chemotherapeutic agents currently approved for treatment of breast cancer are: anthracycline, alkaloids, topoisomerase inhibitors, alkylating agents, and antimetabolites. The important disadvantage of chemotherapy is side effects of drugs such as nausea, vomiting, fatigue, sore mouth, diarrhea, constipation and decreased blood cells count. These side effects can impact patient ability to tolerate treatment, maintain a healthy diet, stay active and enjoy a good quality of life (Hassan et al., 2010).
