In the current trial, improvement in 36-month survival was not observed with upfront surgery for stage IV breast cancer patients. However, a longer follow-up study (median, 40 months) showed statistically significant improvement in median survival. When locoregional treatment in de novo stage IV BC is discussed with the patient as an option, practitioners must consider age, performance status, comorbidities, tumor type, and metastatic disease burden.

Granulomatous mastitis (GM) is a rare inflammatory breast disease of unknown etiology. Although it usually presents with sinus formation and abscesses, it may mimic the clinical characteristics of breast cancer. The aim of this study was to identify the clinical, radiologic, and pathologic characteristics of patients with GM and to show the results of surgical treatment in these patients. A chart review was performed for patients that were treated with a diagnosis of GM at the Breast Unit, Department of Surgery, Istanbul Medical Faculty, University of Istanbul, between September 1998 and January 2003. Eighteen patients were eligible for this study. The median age was 41.5 years (range 16-80 years). Seventeen patients were evaluated by both ultrasonography and mammography; whereas one young patient only had ultrasonography. Three patients were further examined with color Doppler ultrasonography and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Fourteen patients (78%) presented with a mass as the chief symptom, with a median size of 3.9 cm (range 1-8 cm), whereas four patients presented with fistula in their breasts. None of the radiologic techniques distinguished benign disease from cancer in any of the 14 patients that presented with a mass except one patient with normal mammography findings. Ultrasonography was only helpful to localize the abscess associated with a fistula tract in one patient. Therefore fine-needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) was performed in six patients, followed by surgical excisional biopsy. The remaining eight patients with a clinical suspicion of malignancy underwent wide surgical excision with frozen section analysis under general anesthesia. All of the FNAB and frozen section evaluations revealed benign findings. All of the 18 patients underwent a wide excisional biopsy and had a definitive histopathologic diagnosis of GM. The median follow-up was 36 months (range 6-60 months). Only one patient had a recurrent disease, which was diagnosed at 12 months. GM is a rare breast disease that mimics cancer in terms of clinical findings. Preoperative radiologic diagnosis might be difficult. Complete surgical excision is the treatment of choice.

Despite the use of contemporary effective antibiotic treatment, aggressive debridements, and state-of-the-art intensive care conditions, FG still has high mortality and morbidity rates. In our series mortality rates were found to be higher in patients with delayed admission to the hospital, those with DM, and those who initially presented with sepsis.

Purpose:The chemokine receptors CCR7 and CXCR4 have been shown to play an important role in cancer metastasis.We therefore studied the differential expression of CCR7 and CXCR4, along with that of the biomarker HER2-neu, to evaluate whether these biomarkers could predict axillary lymph node metastasis in breast cancer. Experimental Design: Biomarker expression levels were evaluated using paraffin-embedded tissue sections of lymph node^negative (n = 99) and lymph node^positive (n = 98) T 1 breast cancer by immunohistochemical staining. Results: Lymph node^positive tumors showed higher rates of high cytoplasmic CCR7 staining (21.5% versus 8.5%, P = 0.013) and HER2-neu overexpression (21.5% versus 9.3%, P = 0.019) than did lymph node^negative tumors. Similarly, high cytoplasmic CXCR4 expression occurred more commonly in lymph node^positive tumors (11.2% versus 5.1%, P = 0.113). In contrast, predominantly nuclear CXCR4 staining was more likely to be found in lymph node^negative tumors (54.5% versus 37.8%, P = 0.018). Furthermore, cytoplasmic CXCR4 coexpressed with HER2-neu was the only factor associated with involvement of four or more lymph nodes (16.7% versus1.2%, P = 0.04) among lymph node^positive tumors.When all three biomarkers (CCR7, CXCR4, HER2-neu) were utilized together, 50.0% of lymph node^positive tumors highly expressed one of these biomarkers compared with 18.8% of the lymph node^negative tumors (P < 0.0001). Conclusions:Our results suggest that the chemokine receptor CCR7 is a novel biomarker that can predict lymph node metastases in breast cancer. Utilization of additional markers, such as CXCR4 and HER2-neu, further improves the prediction of the presence and extent of lymph node involvement.

Intraoperative assessment of margins assisted in identifying positive/close margins and allowed over a quarter of the patients to be rendered margin-negative with intraoperative re-excision at their original operation. This approach resulted in excellent local control in patients treated with BCS and radiation.