Prognostic Factors in Breast Cancer and their Limitations

Evaluation of the prognosis of patients with breast cancer is criticai in determining post-surgical adjuvant therapy because of great heterogeneity in response to the therapy, At present, the decision-making for adjuvant therapy largely depends on histologic nodal status, but a significant number of patients without nodal involvement undergo relapse. Although great efforts have been made for more accurate and potent factors, significant indicators have not yet been found. One of the promising candidates, however, is histologic angiogenesis in tumors, which we and others have indicated as an independent prognostic factor in node-negative subset by the multivariate analysis. Here we will evaluate several prognostic factors in clinical use.