Abstract
Veterans Administration Cooperative Study A cooperative study utilizing the resources of surgical services in 22 Veterans Administration hospitals was initiated in 1957 as a part of the National Cancer Institute effort to evaluate chemotherapy in cancer. The purpose of the VA Surgical Adjuvant Cooperative Cancer Chemotherapy Study is to demonstrate in a relatively short interval whether chemotherapy administered at and soon after operation as an adjunct to resectional surgery can increase the cure rate for patients, or appreciably prolong their survival time. A secondary objective is to determine whether presently available anticancer agents which have only palliative or no effect against established neoplasms may provide more pronounced benefit in earlier stages of these same cancers. In short, the question is whether prognosis for a patient may be improved. In this study the efficacy of chemotherapeutic agents per se is of less concern than determining whether such chemotherapeutic materials can destroy