Vascular Invasion as an Independent Prognostic Factor in Lymph Node Negative Invasive Breast Cancer

Introduction: Identification of simple and measurable prognostic factors is an important issue in treatmentevaluation of breast cancer. The present study was conducted to evaluate the prognostic role of vascular invasion inlymph node negative breast cancer patients.
Methods: in a retrospective design, we analyzed the recorded profilesof the 1,640 patients treated in the breast cancer department of Motahari clinic affiliated to Shiraz Universityof Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran, from January 1999 to December 2012. Overall and adjusted survivals wereevaluated by the Cox proportional hazard model. All the hypotheses were considered two-sided and a p-valueof 0.05 or less was considered as statistically significant.
Results: Mean age in lymph node negative and positivepatients was 50.0 and 49.8 respectively. In lymph node negative patients, the number of nodes, tumor size,lymphatic invasion, vascular invasion, progesterone receptor, and nuclear grade were significant predictors.In lymph node and lymphatic negative patients, vascular invasion also played a significant prognostic role inthe survival which was not evident in lymph node negative patients with lymphatic invasion. Discussion: Theresults of our large cohort study, with long term follow up and using multivariate Cox proportional model andcomparative design showed a significant prognostic role of vascular invasion in early breast cancer patients.Vascular invasion as an independent prognostic factor in lymph node negative invasive breast cancer