Clinical Research Papers:
Effect of nodal status on clinical outcomes of triplenegative breast cancer: a populationbased study using the SEER 18 database
PDF | Full Text | Supplementary Files | How to cite
Metrics: PDF 2562 views | Full Text 4182 views
Xiao-Xiao Wang1,*, Yi-Zhou Jiang2,*, Jun-Jing Li1,*, Chuan-Gui Song1, Zhi-Ming Shao2
1Department of Breast Surgery, Affiliated Union Hospital, Fujian Medical University, Fuzhou, China
2Department of Breast Surgery, Key Laboratory of Breast Cancer, Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center, Shanghai Medical College, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
*These authors have contributed equally to this work
Correspondence to:
Chuan-Gui Song, e-mail: [email protected]
Yi-Zhou Jiang, e-mail: [email protected]
Keywords: nodal status, tumor size, triple-negative breast cancer, breast cancer-specific survival, overall survival
Received: March 23, 2016 Accepted: April 27, 2016 Published: May 18, 2016
ABSTRACT
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive malignancy with a poor prognosis. Data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results database (2010–2012) were used to identify 10,771 patients with TNBC, and we assessed the effects of lymph node (LN) status on breast cancer-specific survival (BCSS) and overall survival (OS). In our study, a Kaplan-Meier plot showed that LN-negative patients (N0) had better survival outcomes than LN-positive patients and that patients with ≥10 positive LNs (N3) exhibited the worst survival outcomes regardless of tumor size. A pairwise comparison showed no difference in survival outcomes among each group stratified by tumor size. Further, for LN-positive patients with a tumor size ≤2 cm (T1) or >5 cm (T3), there were similar outcomes between patients with one to three LNs (N1) and those with four to nine LNs (N2), whereas N1 patients experienced significantly better survival outcomes than N3 patients (P<0.001). Therefore, ten metastatic lymph nodes was the cut-off value for poor prognosis. Nevertheless, for patients with a tumor size of 2-5 cm (T2), the extent of LN involvement contributed prognostic value to OS but not BCSS. In summary, we found that nodal status and tumor size exhibited distinct interaction patterns for predicting the outcomes of TNBC. These results provide deeper insight into the prognostic value of nodal status in TNBC.