Pathological and Clinical Characteristics of Triple Negative Breast Cancer and Disease Relapse

Duaa Knaj,Michael Georgeos

doi:10.11648/j.ijcocr.20200504.11

Abstract

Background: Breast cancer is the most common cancer and an important cause of death in women. It has psychological and social repercussions in patients. Objective: We aimed to assess triple negative breast cancer characteristics, patterns and time of disease relapse. Patients and methods: We reviewed the clinical files and pathology reports of 100 patients who had primary triple-negative breast cancer between 2013 -2017 at the oncology center, Tishreen University Hospital in Lattakia, Syria. We collected the information about (age at diagnosis, histological subtype of tumor, histological grade, tumor size, tumor stage, lymph node status), which was taken at the time of diagnosis. We used SPSS in this research, and Chi-square test was used to compare variables. Results: We found that most of patients (85%) were 40 years of age and older when diagnosed with breast cancer. The most common histological subtype was invasive ductal carcinoma IDC (84%). Regarding the size of the primary tumor, the majority (72%) were T2. According to lymph node status at diagnosis, 41 patients (41%) were N0, (33%) of total were N1. We found grade 2 in 52%, followed by grade3 (41%). For the tumor clinical stage, it was according to AJCC 7<sup>th</sup> edition, stage II (63%) and stage III in (30%). We found that 32 patients had a recurrence (32%) while (68%) had no recurrence during the follow-up period. As for the development of recurrence, (40.6%) had visceral recurrence; the most pattern was hepatic (61.5%) then pulmonary (38.5%). Recurrence occurred in (22 of 32) patients during the first 2 years (68.7%). We found a significant association between lymph node status and recurrence in patients with TNBC (P=0.004) Conclusion: T and N were important predictive factors for relapse in patients with triple-negative breast cancer, which tends to recur often during the first two years of diagnosis with distant metastases as well as localized recurrence.

Highlights

Breast cancer has psychological and social repercussions in patients
The study was performed in a retrospective manner; we reviewed the medical files and histopathology reports for each patient a questionnaire was drawn up with the following clinicpathology information, which was taken at the time of diagnosis: age at diagnosis, tumor histological subtype, primary size of the tumor, histological grade, stage of the tumor, lymph node status
Eighty-five patients (85%) were 40 years- old and older when diagnosed with breast cancer, 15% were less than 40 years old with a median age of 53 years

Summary

Introduction

Breast cancer has psychological and social repercussions in patients It is the most common cancer and the second cause of death in women after lung cancer [1]. Breast cancer is the most common cancer and an important cause of death in women It has psychological and social repercussions in patients. Objective: We aimed to assess triple negative breast cancer characteristics, patterns and time of disease relapse. We found a significant association between lymph node status and recurrence in patients with TNBC (P=0.004) Conclusion: T and N were important predictive factors for relapse in patients with triple-negative breast cancer, which tends to recur often during the first two years of diagnosis with distant metastases as well as localized recurrence

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