Although trastuzumab is the indicated therapy for erbB2/neu-positive cases, we did not consider the addition of this drug to the combination, given the main objective of the study; indeed, the inclusion of trastuzumab in the subgroup of erbB2/neu-positive patients would have made the analysis of the data difficult, especially considering the underlying higher susceptibility of erbB2/neu-positive tumours to both anthracyclines and trastuzumab. Here, ERBB2 is linked to neoplasm.