The natural history of operable breast cancer after primary treatment

This paper aimed at reviewing information on the natural history of operable breast carcinoma after primary treatment. Breast carcinoma does not appear as a single disease entity, but as a wide variety of clinical manifestations. Primary loco-regional treatment should have a curative aim. However, the probability of early or late relapse increases according to a series of prognostic factors. The axillary node status remains the main prognostic indicator but especially in node-negative patients, an increasing number of additional morphologic and biological prognostic factors can classify patients according to a low, good or high risk categories. The natural history of the disease is influenced by loco-regional treatment as far as loco-regional control is concerned. The risk of relapse after loco-regional treatment alone differs during the first three years according to nodal status and it then tends to decrease and become more homogeneous. Adjuvant systemic therapies can decrease the probability of relapse, mainly in loco-regional but rarely in distant sites, thus limiting the absolute advantage. In any case, most women after primary treatment are not cured and are still carriers of occult disease. A timely diagnosis of first relapse after primary treatment is the direct aim of follow-up. An improvement in survival is only an indirect aim of the follow-up, and depends, if at all, on an anticipated diagnosis of recurrence, on the disease site in which this anticipated diagnosis is feasible and on application of different therapeutic strategies according to disease extension and to disease site. Follow-up could be tailored according to time after primary treatment (with more frequent examinations during the first three years than thereafter) and according to prognostic factors, mainly the axillary nodal status. Follow-up should not be considered as conceptually independent either from primary treatment or from treatment after recurrence. At time of first relapse, a new prognostic evaluation can be based on sites of disease recurrence, ER status at time of diagnosis and the time interval from primary treatment to relapse. Different therapeutic approaches could be planned according to survival expectation, including experimental treatments for patients having a dire prognosis.