Abstract
One hundred and eighty patients with histological node negative breast cancer operated on during the period between 1976 and 1985 at our institute were studied for prognostic factors in an attempt to single out the high risk group for recurrence. The medial duration of follow-up was 94 months; 24 (13%) patients have had a recurrence to date.
The recurrence rate was significantly related to tumor size, histological type and histological grade. Disease free survival was significantly related to tumor size and histological grade, but not to histological type. These three prognostic factors were encoded as the prognostic score, and 171 patients except for nine of histological special type were divided into three groups of increasing gravity according to the prognostic score. The differences between the groups were significant for the recurrence rate and disease free survival. The recurrence rates for the three groups were respectively 7.4, 16 and 25%, whears they were 92, 83 and 74% for disease free survival. According to these prognostic socres, 28 patients (16%) having the poorest prognosis of early recurrence and short survival after recurrence were singled out as the high risk group for recurrence.
We concluded that analysis of node negative breast cancer using polyfactors according to the prognostic score might be useful in singling out the high risk group for recurrence indicated for systemic adjuvant chemotherapy.
