Relationship among clinical characteristics, response and prognosis of neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with triple negative breast cancer

Abstract

Objective To explore the clinical and pathological characteristics of triple-negative breast cancer(TNBC) and to compare the response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy and survival in patients with TNBC and non-TNBC. Methods Five hundred and thirty-five patients were included in this retrospective study. 75 patients were TNBC and 460 were non-TNBC. The clinical and pathological characteristics, 5-year disease free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) were analyzed. 88 patients were treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy in which 26 patients were TNBC, the other were non-TNBC. Their responses to neoadjuvant chemotherapy, and the relations of response and survival were analyzed. Results The patients with TNBC were younger than those with non-TNBC (35 vs 44), and most of the patients with TNBC were premenopausal at diagnosis (88.0 % vs 67.2 %, P =0.009). The frequency of invasive ductal carcinoma was higher in patients with TNBC than those with non-TNBC (92.0 % vs 80.4 %, P =0.020). Generally patients with TNBC had higher grade tumors (grade Ⅱ ) than patients with non-TNBC (56.0 % vs 17.2 %, P = 0.000). Lower rate of lymph node metastasis were observed in patients with TNBC than those with non-TNBC (33.3 % vs 53.9 %, P = 0.001). Patients with TNBC had worse 5-year DFS (66.67 %) and OS (80.0 %) than those with non-TNBC (74.78 %, 90.00 %). In this study. 88 patients were treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy. The overall response rate(OR) of patients with TNBC was 88.46 %, including 65.38 % clinical complete response (cCR)and 23.08 % clinical partial response (cPR). It was significantly higher than patients with non-TNBC respectively (82.26 %, 37.10 %, 45.16 %) (P 0.05). In contrast, TNBC patients with residual disease after neoadjuvant chemotherapy had worse 5-year DFS and OS compared with non-TNBC (P <0.05). Conclusion TNBC is common in young premenopausal women. Its main pathological style is nonspecial type of invasive ductal carcinoma with high grade, with low lymph node metastasis rate. Patients with TNBC are more sensitive to neoadjuvant chemotherapy than those with non-TNBC. Patients with TNBC have increased cCR rates compared with non-TNBC, and those with cCR have a good prognosis. TNBC patients in whom cCR are not achieved have significantly worse survival rates compared with that of non-TNBC patients. Key words: Breast neoplasms; Drug therapy, combination; Triple negative breast neoplasms; Prognosis