The role of adjuvant chemotherapy in stage I–III male breast cancer: a SEER-based analysis

Abstract

Background and aims: Male breast cancer is an uncommon disease. The benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy in the treatment of male breast cancer patients has not been determined. The aim of this study was to explore the value of adjuvant chemotherapy in men with stage I–III breast cancer, and we hypothesized that some male patients may safely skip adjuvant chemotherapy. Methods: Male breast cancer patients between 2010 and 2015 from the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results database were included. Univariate and multivariate Cox analyses were used to analyse the factors associated with survival. The propensity score matching method was adopted to balance baseline characteristics. Kaplan–Meier curves were used to evaluate the impacts of adjuvant chemotherapy on survival. The primary endpoint was survival. Results: We enrolled 514 patients for this study, including 257 patients treated with chemotherapy and 257 patients without. There was a significant difference in overall survival (OS) but not in breast cancer-specific survival (BCSS) between the two groups ( p < 0.001 for OS and p = 0.128 for BCSS, respectively). Compared with the non-chemotherapy group, the chemotherapy group had a higher 4-year OS rate (97.5% versus 95.2%, p < 0.001), while 4-year BCSS was similar (98% versus 98.8%, p = 0.128). The chemotherapy group had longer OS than the non-chemotherapy group among HR+, HER2–, tumour size >2 cm, lymph node-positive male breast cancer patients ( p < 0.05). Regardless of tumour size, there were no differences in OS or BCSS between the chemotherapy and non-chemotherapy cohorts for lymph node-negative patients (OS: p > 0.05, BCSS: p > 0.05). Adjuvant chemotherapy showed no significant effects on both OS and BCSS in patients with stage I (OS: p = 0.100, BCSS: p = 0.858) and stage IIA breast cancer (OS: p > 0.05, BCSS: p > 0.05). Conclusion: For stage I and stage IIA patients, adjuvant chemotherapy could not improve OS and BCSS. Therefore, adjuvant chemotherapy might be skipped for stage I and stage IIA male breast cancer patients.

The beneficial role of Asian-based RecurIndex test in the prognostic prediction in Chinese male breast cancer patients

“…The results showed that 10-year OS rates of patients with lymph node-negative disease and those with lymph node-positive disease were 75% and 43%, respectively, indicating that the death risk of MBC patients with lymph node-positive disease did not decrease significantly after adjuvant chemotherapy 27 . There is another study showing that adjuvant chemotherapy may be skipped for stage I-IIA MBC patients 28 . Additionally, our results also revealed that 4 high-risk patients identified by RI-DR who developed recurrence or deaths might benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy, suggesting that adjuvant chemotherapy may be taken into consideration in MBC patients at high risk of recurrence or metastasis 29 .…”

Development and validation of a prognostic nomogram model for HER2-positive male breast cancer patients

“…However, many studies have shown that chemotherapy can achieve good results in other types of breast cancer. Adjuvant chemotherapy was shown to signi cantly improve OS in a study of MBC [25]. Another study has shown that chemotherapy is a protective factor for prognosis in patients with HER2-positive breast cancer who also have bone metastases [23].…”

A Novel Method for Dynamically Assessing the Prognosis of Patients with pT1 Gastric Cancer: A Large Population-Based Dynamic Prognostic Analysis

“…The SEER data browser was used to access all information in the SEER database, which compiled incidence and survival data pertaining to roughly 28% of the US population [ 23 , 24 ]. The SEER-stat software (SEER ∗ Stat 8.3.6) was used to screen the cohort data in the present study.…”