Clinical pathologic features and prognosis of triple negative breast cancer

Objective To analyze the clinical pathologic features and prognosis of triple negative breast cancer. Method A total of 570 cases of breast cancer between January 2005 and June 2007 were analyzed,113 cases were negative for estrogen receptor(ER), progesterone receptor(PR) and HER-2 as the triple negative group, 48 cases were negative for ER, PR and positive for HER-2 as the control group. The clinical pathologic features, recurrence and survival of the patients were compared. Results The median age was 46 years old, 15 cases (13.3%) had a breast cancer family history or oophoroma family history,86.7%(98/113) of pathological types were invasive ductal carcinoma,lymph node metastases were detected in 31.0%(35/113 ) in the triple negative group. No significant difference was found for p53 staining between the triple negative group[58.4%(66/113)positive] and the control group [41.7%(20/48) positive] (P＞0.05).The median time of follow-up was 24 months,the loss was 5 cases, 10 cases (9.3%, 10/108) had local recurrence and metastasis,and 8 cases (7.4%,8/108) died from breast cancer metastases,2-year survival rate was 96.2% in the triple negative group.There was no significant difference in local recurrence and survival time between the triple negative group and the control group (P＞0.05). Conclusions The incidence of triple negative breast cancer is higher than other data reported. Triple negative breast cancer exhibits the same clinical pathological features compared with ER-/PR-/HER-2 + subtypes,and the prognosis is similar to the controls. Key words: Breast neoplasms;  Receptors, estrogen;  Prognosis;  Clinical characteristics