The aim of the present meta-analysis was to investigate the impact of adjuvant locoregional radiation therapy (LRRT) in breast cancer patients with clinical lymph node metastatic disease achieving ypN0 after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT). Materials and methods: A systematic review of studies on PubMed was performed. A meta-analysis was conducted by computing extracted hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) into a fixed-effects model. Results: Thirteen studies were included in the meta-analysis. Adjuvant LRRT significantly reduced the risk of locoregional recurrence (LRR) in patients with N+ at diagnosis and ypN0 (HR 0.59; 95% CI 0.42-0.81). However, no statistically significant difference on disease-free survival (DFS) or overall survival (OS) was found. Conclusions: LRRT significantly reduced the risk of LRR in patients with ypN0 after NACT whereas no impact on DFS or OS was observed. The low level of evidence should be considered when interpreting the results in clinical practice.

Purpose An increased incidence of hypothyroidism among breast cancer survivors has been observed in earlier studies. The impact of the postoperative treatment modalities and their potential interplay on hypothyroidism development needs to be studied.Methods We conducted a population- and registry- based study using the Breast Cancer Data Base Sweden (BCBaSe) including females diagnosed with breast cancer between 2006 and 2012. In total, 21,268 female patients diagnosed with early breast cancer between 2006 and 2012, with no previous prescription of thyroid hormones and no malignant diagnosis during the last ten years before breast cancer diagnosis, were included in the final analysis.Results During the follow-up (median follow-up time 7.9 years), 1,212 patients (5.7%) developed hypothyroidism at a median time of 3.45 years from the index date. No association of the systemic oncological treatment in terms of either chemotherapy or endocrine therapy and hypothyroidism development could be identified. A higher risk (HR 1.68;95% CI:1.42–1.99) of hypothyroidism identified among patients treated with radiation treatment of the regional lymph nodes whereas no increased risk in patients treated only with radiation therapy to the breast/chest-wall was found (HR:1.01; 95% CI:0.86–1.19). The risk of hypothyroidism in the cohort treated with radiotherapy of the regional lymph nodes was present irrespective of the use of adjuvant chemotherapy treatment.Conclusions Based on the results of our study, the implementation of hypothyroidism surveillance among the breast cancer survivors treated with radiotherapy of the regional lymph nodes can be considered as reasonable in the follow-up program.