Clinicopathological features and survival outcomes of very young women (aged 30 and under ) with breast cancer

Abstract

Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate clinicopathological characteristics and prognostic factors of patients with breast cancer (BC) aged 30 and under. Materials and methods: We retrospectively analyzed BC patients aged 30 and under who were treated our oncology department. Patients characteristics, pathologic and treatment related data, pattern of relapse and survival were collected from hospital files. Results: A total of 50 patients were enrolled. At diagnosis, 5 (10%) patients had metastatic disease, 2 (4%) patients had pregnancy, 5 (10%) patients had breastfeeding, and the median age was 28 (20-30) years. The patients had pathological features, including node-positivity (66%), grade 2 (50%), lymphovascular invasion (LVI) (38%) and perineural invasion (PNI) (26%). Luminal A was the predominant molecular subtype (44%). Twelve percent of the patients had HER2-like and 16% had triple negative diseases. In 45 non-metastatic patients, the median follow-up was 59.9 months, and 5-year disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) were 61.4% and 95.5%, respectively. During follow-up of non-metastatic patients, 5 (11.4%) patients were died, 3 (6.8%) patients developed local recurrence, and 17 (38.7%) patients developed distant metastatic disease. In Cox regression analyses, we found that adjuvant radiotherapy was a favorable predictor of DFS. Conclusions: Breast cancer in women aged 30 and under years was associated with higher triple negative and HER2-like subtypes rates. Also, these patients had better 5-year OS rate than reported in previous studies for young women, and adjuvant radiotherapy was an independent prognostic factors of DFS.