Radiotherapy of the chest wall following mastectomy for early-stage breast cancer: impact on local recurrence and overall survival

Abstract

Introduction: Recent studies have renewed an old controversy about the efficacy of adjuvant radiotherapy following mastectomy for breast cancer. Radiotherapy is usually recommended for advanced disease, but whether or not to use it in pT1–T2 pN0 situations is still being debated. This study was designed to clarify whether or not routine radiotherapy of the chest wall following mastectomy reduces the risk of local recurrence and if it influences the overall survival rate. Methods: Retrospective analysis of patients treated with mastectomy for pT1–T2 pN0 tumors and no systemic treatment. Patients treated with radiotherapy of the chest wall following mastectomy (Group A) are compared with those treated with mastectomy alone (Group B). Results: A total of 918 patients underwent mastectomy. Patients who received adjuvant radiotherapy after mastectomy ( n = 114) had a significantly lower risk for local recurrence. Ten years after the primary diagnosis, 98.1% of the patients with radiotherapy were disease free compared to 86.4% of the patients without radiotherapy. The average time interval from primary diagnosis until local recurrence was 8.9 years in Group A and 2.8 years in Group B. The Cox regression analysis including radiotherapy, tumor size and tumor grading found the highest risk for local recurrence for patients without radiotherapy ( p < 0.0004). In terms of overall survival however, the Kaplan–Meier analysis showed no difference between the two groups ( p = 0.8787) and the Cox regression analysis failed to show any impact on overall survival. Conclusion: With observation spanning over 35 years, this study shows that adjuvant radiotherapy of the chest wall following mastectomy reduces the risk for local recurrence in node-negative patients with pT1–T2 tumors but has no impact on the overall survival rate.