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. 2017 Aug 14;12(8):e0182953.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0182953. eCollection 2017.

Lymph node status have a prognostic impact in breast cancer patients with distant metastasis

Chuangang Tang  1 , Pei Wang  1 , Xiaoxin Li  2 , Bingqing Zhao  3 , Haochang Yang  4 , Haifeng Yu  5 , Changwen Li  1
Affiliations

Lymph node status have a prognostic impact in breast cancer patients with distant metastasis

Chuangang Tang et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: The objective of this retrospective study was to determine whether lymph node metastasis has a prognostic impact on patients with stage IV breast cancer.

Patients and methods: Seven thousand three hundred and seventy-nine patients with de novo stage IV breast cancer diagnosed from 2004 to 2013 were identified. Kaplan-Meier estimate method was fitted to measure overall survival and breast cancer-specific survival (BCSS). Cox proportional hazard analysis was used to evaluate the association between N stage and BCSS after controlling variables such as other patient/tumor characteristics.

Results: The primary site of M1 tumors was mainly upper-outer quadrant and overlapping lesion of the breast. Patients with N1 disease had better overall survival and BCSS than did those without lymph node metastasis. The overall survival and BCSS of M1 patients with N3 disease were significantly lower than that of those with N0, N1 and N2 disease, whereas patients with N2 and N0/N1 involvement showed no significant difference with survival. Multivariate analysis showed that lymph node metastasis was an important prognostic factor for M1 patients (N1 versus N0, hazard ratio [HR] = 0.902, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.825-0.986, p = 0.023; N3 versus N0, HR = 1.161, 95% CI: 1.055-1.276, p = 0.002). For M1 patients, age, race, marital status, primary site, ER, PR and HER2 were the independent prognostic factors.

Conclusions: The cohort study provides an insight into de novo stage IV breast cancer with lymph node metastasis. Our results indicated that accurate lymph node evaluation for stage IV patients is still necessary to obtain important prognostic information.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Overall survival according to N categories in patients with M1 breast cancer.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Breast cancer–specific survival according to N categories in patients with M1 Disease.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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