Prognostic factors for triple-negative breast cancer patients receiving preoperative systemic chemotherapy

Triple-negative breast cancer patients are more likely to achieve a pathologic complete response after preoperative chemotherapy but they have still poor prognosis. The aim of this study was to identify prognostic factors in triple-negative breast cancer patients receiving preoperative chemotherapy.

Triple-negative breast cancer patients who underwent preoperative chemotherapy were retrospectively analyzed. Significant prognostic factors among clinical and pathologic variables were investigated with Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox proportional hazards modeling for disease-free survival and overall survival.

Among the 135 triple-negative breast cancer patients, the median age was 54 years, median tumor diameter on palpation was 4.5 cm, and there were 62 clinically node positive patients. The clinical response rate was 76% (103 patients) and pathologic complete response rate was 21% (29 patients). Median disease-free survival was 44.4 months and median overall survival was 49.2 months. Univariate and multivariate analysis showed that that completion of chemotherapy, better clinical response, fewer positive nodes, and lower histologic grades were significant factors associated with both disease-free and overall survival.

Our data demonstrated that clinical response of preoperative systemic chemotherapy is an important independent favorable prognostic factor for triple-negative breast cancer.