Prognosis of Node-Positive Breast Cancer Patients Who Underwent Parasternal Lymph Node Biopsy During Surgery Followed by Doxorubicin- or Mitoxantrone-Containing Adjuvant Chemotherapy

Abstract

The authors examined the survival rates of 60 patients with breast cancer who underwent parasternal lymph node biopsy during surgery with axillary lymph node dissection and had histologically confirmed axillary node metastasis followed by adjuvant doxorubicin- or mitoxantrone-containing combination chemotherapy to ascertain whether administration of anthracycline or its analogue improved the prognosis of both axillary and parasternal node-positive patients. The overall survival rate (OS) for the parasternal node-positive patients (n=13, 21.7%) was 30.6%, and relapse-free survival rate (RFS) fell to 0% at the 104-month follow-up. Although the survival rate for all axillary node-positive patients was similar to those in previous reports, the OS and RFS for both axillary and parasternal node-positive patients were significantly worse than that for axillary node-positive and parasternal node-negative patients, despite treatment with adjuvant doxorubicin- or mitoxantrone-containing combination chemotherapy. Other intensive adjuvant treatment strategies are needed to reduce distant metastases for high-risk breast cancer patients having both axillary and parasternal nodes positive.

The Tumor-Specific Expression of L1 Retrotransposons Independently Correlates with Time to Relapse in Hormone-Negative Breast Cancer Patients

“…In the multivariate analysis, lymph-node involvement and L1 expression were the only two independent/significant variables. Node involvement is recognized as one of the main markers for the risk of relapse in BC [ 54 , 55 , 56 ]. By confirming the independence of L1 with respect to node involvement as a prognostic marker, retrotransposon expression could represent a high risk of relapse in BC patients.…”