221 Prevalence of breast cancer patients with distant metastases at the time of presentation – A retrospective cohort study

Abstract

Abstract Introduction About 8% of new breast cancer patients have distant metastases at presentation.[1] Current local practice is to perform staging CT on selected patients. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of distant metastases in a cohort of newly diagnosed breast cancer. Methods A single-institution retrospective analysis of prospectively collected database of all newly diagnosed patients between January and June 2019 (pre-covid era). Patients with previous history of breast cancer were excluded. Data was collated from hospital medical records. SPSS version 21 was used for analysis. Results A total of 85 patients with a mean age of 66±15.593 were included. Tumour size ranged from 1.4 to 83mm. 22.4% were ER Negative, 14.8% HER2 positive and 37.3% node positive. Almost half of the patients (49.4%) underwent staging investigations at first presentation. The incidence of distant metastases within 1 year of presentation was 10.6% (9/85). 4/9 (44.4%) presented late with symptoms greater than 3 months duration. On applying one-way ANOVA to compare means, distant metastases at presentation was significantly related to grade (p-value= 0.002) and nodal status (p-value=0.006). There was no statistically significant relationship to age, ER/HER-2 status, tumour size or duration of symptoms. Conclusions Metastatic breast cancer at presentation in our cohort appears concordant with the literature. Distant metastases within a year of presentation is significantly related to grade independent of nodal status, and staging investigations should be considered in early breast cancer patients with higher tumour grade irrespective of other factors. 1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35018787/