Lymph node ratio assessment of brain metastasis in early breast cancer cases

Abstract

Background: Ten to 30% of early breast cancer (EBC) patients develop brain metastasis (BM) during their follow-up. In this study, we aimed to evaluate importance of the lymph node ratio (LNR) in development of BM in EBC cases. Materials and Methods: Ninety patients whom had axillary metastases in lymph nodes at their initial diagnosis and developed BM during 5-year follow-up were detected in 950 EBC patients. LNR values were calculated for all patients and after categorization into 4 molecular sub-types as luminal A, luminal B HER-2 (+), HER-2 overexpressing and basal- like. Comparison was with control group patients who had similar characteristics. Results: In the comparison of all molecular sub-types of LNR, 54.9% and 28.4% values were found in patients with and without BM respectively (p<0.001). In the comparison of the LNR with control groups, a statistically significant differences were found with luminal A with BM (p=0.001), luminal B HER-2 (p=0.001), HER-2 overexpressing (p=0.027) and basal-like groups (p<0.001). In the evaluation of patients with BM, the highest ratio was found in the basal-like group (67.9%) and there was a statistically significant difference between this group and the others (p=0.048). Conclusions: EBC patients developing BM within 5 years followup had significantly higher LNRs for all molecular sub-types, especially in the basal-like group. Larger scale studies are now needed for evaluating LNR prognostic importance for EBC regarding BM development.