J Korean Surg Soc.
2007 Aug;73(2):96-102.
Characteristics of Late Recurrent Breast Cancers More than 5 Years after Primary Treatment
- Affiliations
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- 1Department of Surgery, College of Medicine, Yeungnam University, Daegu, Korea. crystallee@medical.yu.ac.kr
Abstract
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PURPOSE: The conventional prognostic factors for breast cancer reflect the early short-term prognosis. However, many of these factors cannot predict the long-term prognosis accurately. Therefore, this study evaluated the characteristics of breast cancer that would indicate the development of delayed recurrences after primary treatment.
METHODS
Eight hundred and forty nine female breast cancer patients were divided into two groups, an early recurrent (within 5 years) and a late recurrent group (after 5 years). Each conventional prognostic factor including the histological grade (HG), nuclear grade (NG), lympho-vascular invasion (LVI), status of hormonal receptor, p53 and c-erbB2 were compared to identify any factor that would show significant difference.
RESULTS
The overall recurrence rate was 14.2% (121/849), which was significantly higher in patients with a high TNM stage, high HG and NG, positive LVI, negative receptor status and expression of p53 (P<0.05). The mean disease free interval was 28.2 months. In the recurred patients, 90.1% (109/121) recurred within 5 years, and 9.9% (12/121) recurred after 5 years of treatment. There was a similar distribution of most prognostic factors in the two groups (P>0.05). However, the positive rate of the hormonal receptor was significantly higher in the late recurrent group (P=0.019). All these factors, except for c-erbB2 over-expression, were independent prognostic factors for a recurrence within 5 years (P<0.05) but the significance of these factors disappeared after that time (P>0.05).
CONCLUSION
The positive hormone receptor of breast cancer is a good early prognostic factor that can also predict late recurrences.
