Comparison of Clinicopathologcal Characteristics in Metastatic Breast Cancer Patients: AtInitial Presentation and in the Follow up Time

In this cross sectional study, we tried to investigate the difference of clinicopathological characteristics of tumor between metastatic breast cancer patients at initial presentation and patients with metastatic breast carcinoma (MBC) in the follow up time. Medical records of 290 patients with MBC at initial presentation (n=115) group I or in follow up time (n=175) group II between 1997 and 2012 were retrospectively evaluated.The mean age of the patients at diagnosis in group I was 48.2 years and in group II was 50.6 years. Compared to de novo metastatic disease, MBC tumors in the follow up time were more likely to be grade 3 (34.4 % vs. 28.4 %), estrogen receptor (ER) positive (60.8 vs. 72.9 %), progesterone receptor (PR) positive (54.3 % vs. 66.7 %), and HER2-positive (37.6 % vs. 41.2 %), tumor size greater than 5 centimeter (T3) (31.6 % vs. 52.6 %), axillary lymph node positive ( 13.2 % vs. 35.5 %).The results indicate that there is a meaningful correlation between tumor size and positive axillary lymph node (P=0.002 & P=0.001 respectively) and the presence of metastatic breast cancer at initial presentation compare to metastases in the follow up time. Our study showed that tumor size and axillary lymph node involvement are independent variables in metastatic breast cancer to predict the probability of metastasis at initial presentation

Keywords:

breast cancer , tumor characteristics , metastases