Clinicopathological Data of Breast Cancer in Diabetic Patients

Abstract

Background: Diabetes mellitus and breast cancer are both chronic diseases. Breast cancer in patients with diabetes is often diagnosed at an advanced stage and has worse prognosis. Aim of work: To investigate the clinicopathological factors, hormonal receptor status and molecular subtypes of breast cancer in diabetic breast cancer patients. Patients and methods: Records of patients presenting to the radiotherapy committee of the breast cancer clinic of Ain Shams University Hospital in the period between January 2017 and January 2018 were revised regarding age, presence of diabetes, presence of comorbidities, and type of the surgery performed. Pathological data such as: Tumor size (T), LN staging (LN), ER, PR, Her2/neu and Ki67 status were also recorded. Patients were divided into 2 groups: Group (I): those with diabetes and Group (II): those without diabetes. Inclusion criteria were Breast cancer cases with proven pathological diagnosis, available IHC studies, clear record of comorbidity status, age > 18 years, cases who underwent upfront surgery. Exclusion criteria were metastatic cases, bilateral cases, cases with double primary, male breast cancer cases, and those with missing data for ER, PR and Her2/neu. Results: Retrieving data from the files of the patients that met the inclusion criteria in the allocated period revealed that 117 patients had diabetes (Group I) and 199 didn’t have the disease (Group II), There was a highly significant difference between both groups regarding the age as most of the patients with diabetes were above fifty years of age (84.6%) compared to only 44.7% of the patients without diabetes also the mean age of patients with diabetes was significantly higher (59 years) compared to 48 years of age for those without diabetes. Diabetes was associated with hypertension in most of the cases (69%). Comorbidities other than hypertension were recorded in 39 diabetic patients (33.3%) and 21 (10.6%) nondiabetic patients and the difference was statistically highly significant. In the diabetic group, the most encountered comorbidity was cardiac disease in 14.5% of patients. In the diabetic group, most of the patients underwent modified radical mastectomy (MRM) with a percentage of about 54.7% compared to 48.2% of patients for both groups respectively. Regarding pathological data apart from the finding that presence of diabetes was associated with more multiple tumors (p value: 0.013), no other statistically significant differences between both groups were found. Hormonal receptor status and molecular subtypes were also not affected by presence of diabetes in the studied breast cancer patients.