BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is a common women's disease. Usually, oestrogen is blamed in the aetiology and correlated with the prognosis; however, androgens are recently raising concern about its role in the breast cancer treatment and prognosis. METHODS: In this study we retrieved archival paraffin blocks of breast cancer patients and stained it for androgen. Thereafter, we compared clinico-epidemiologic parameters, histopathology, neoadjuvant response and recurrence rate and pattern among patients with and without androgen receptor (AR) expression. RESULTS: In total, 119 patients fulfilled enrolment criteria; AR expression were present in 77.3% of the patients. AR expression was associated with less grade III (6.8% versus 36.4%), and less triple negative (6.2% versus 25%), but similar overall recurrence rate (25% versus 22.2%). However, distant recurrence was significantly higher in androgen positive patients (91.3% versus 33.3% of all recurrences). CONCLUSION: Androgen expression appears to be common among breast cancer, but with no clear implication in tumour aggressiveness or effect on the rate of recurrence. However, being commonly associated with distant spread may have an impact on survival of the patients.

Background & Objectives: Retroperitoneal sarcomas are often advanced at presentation. Surgery remains the only available curative management. The extent of surgical resection is debatable. There is a strong cause for compartmental resection of the whole hemi-retroperitoneum, but high-level evidence is lacking. This systematic review examines published evidence for the effect of resection policy on the oncologic outcome.Methods: The PubMed was searched for “retroperitoneal neoplasms”, “surgery”, “surgical procedures, operative”, and “margin of resection”. Web Of Science™ was searched for “retroperitoneal neoplasms” and “surgical management”. English-language articles that investigated retroperitoneal sarcoma in adult patients with extent of surgery as an independent variable and oncologic outcome as endpoints were included.Results: Twenty-three articles were retained for analysis. All articles were retrospective. Meta-analysis showed equivalence of overall survival with extended surgery versus limited surgery and with sole tumor resection versus en-bloc resection with contiguous organs. Multivisceral resection did not increase morbidity. Conclusions: The role of universal extended surgery and the subset of patients who may benefit from irradiation treatment remain open questions.