Objective To study the long-term effect of neoadjuvant chemotherapy on advanced breast cancer. Methods The CAF neoadjuvant chemotherapy 〔CTX 500 mg/m2(1st day, 8th day), 5-FU 500 mg/m2(1st day, 8th day), and ADM 30 mg/m2 (1st day) every 3 weeks〕 was carried out in 31 breast cancer patients (stageⅢ,Ⅳ) for 2 cycles before operation, compared with 30 patients (stage Ⅲa) whose therapies were never done and operations could be feasible. Results The overall response rate was 87.1%(27/31). The stages of 19 patients among 31 (61.3%) declined (6 patients to stage Ⅲa, 8 to stageⅡb, 4 to stageⅡa, 1 to stage 0, 1 to complete response and none to pathological complete response). The disease-free survival time of the patients was 56.3 months which was obviously longer than that of the patients without neoadjuvant chemotherapy (43.5 months, P