Factors Influencing Lymph Node Positivity in HER2/neu+ Breast Cancer Patients

oleh: Katherine Englander, Neha Chintapally, Julia Gallagher, Kelly Elleson, Weihong Sun, Junmin Whiting, Christine Laronga, Marie Catherine Lee

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2023-02-01

Deskripsi

Axillary lymph node metastases are a key prognostic factor in breast cancer treatment. Our aim was to evaluate how tumor size, tumor location, and imaging results correlate to axillary lymph node diseases for patients with stage I-III HER2/neu+ breast cancer. This is a single-institution retrospective chart review of female breast cancer patients diagnosed with primary invasive Her2/neu+ breast cancer who were treated with upfront surgical resection from 2000–2021. Of 75 cases, 44/75 (58.7%) had nodal metastasis, and there was a significant association of larger tumor size to nodal metastases (<i>p</i> ≤ 0.001). Patients with negative nodes had a smaller mean tumor size (<i>n</i> = 30; 15.10 mm) than patients with positive nodes (<i>n</i> = 45; 23.9 mm) (<i>p</i> = 0.002). Preoperative imaging detected suspicious nodes in 36 patients, and ultrasound detected the most positive nodes (14/18; <i>p</i> = 0.027). Our data confirms that tumor size at diagnosis is correlated with a higher likelihood of axillary involvement in patients with Her2/neu+ breast cancer; notably, a large proportion of Her2/neu+ breast cancers have metastatic involvement of axillary lymph nodes even with small primary lesions.