The prognostic significance of epidermal growth factor receptor expression in breast cancer

The association between epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) expression, clinicopathological variables, silver-stained nuclear organizer region (Ag-NOR) counts, and patient survival was determined in 93 patients with operable breast cancer. The EGFR expression was found to be significantly associated with the presence and number of axillary lymph node metastases (P = 0.0429), but not with age, menopausal status, tumor size, histologic type or grade, or Ag-NOR counts. In a univariate analysis, a significant difference was also observed in the survival of patients stratified by tumor size (P = 0.0091), histologic grade (P = 0.0352), axillary lymph node metastases (P = 0.0001), and EGFR expression (P = 0.0263). However, a multivariate analysis revealed that axillary lymph node metastases was the only strong independent predictor of survival (P < 0.0001). When axillary lymph node metastases were excluded from the Cox model, the EGFR expression tended to be an independent prognostic factor (P = 0.0558). The results of this study thus indicate that the prognostic value of EGFR expression is limited because the EGFR expression is significantly associated with axillary lymph node metastases.