Purpose: In the literature, small number of study has addressed time of recurrence in breast cancer. We analyzed clinicopathological factors predicting early or late recurrence in breast cancer patients and also prognostic factors related with recurrence-free survival (RFS) in recurrent patients.
Patients/methods: We evaluated retrospectively 1980 breast cancer patients. Relapsed was defined as early if it was occured first 5 year of follow-up (Group 1) and late if it was occured after 5 years (Group 2). The clinicopathological factors were compared in respect of time of recurrence. The prognostic factors were evaluated using univariate and multivariate analyses.
Results: Recurrence wase detected in 141 patient during follow-up. Tumors recurred after 5 years more likely to have lower stage (p = 0.05), tumors without lymphovascular invasion (LVI) (p < 0.001) and perineural invasion (PNI) (p = 0.01), and also HER2 negative (p < 0.001). The median RFS time and 5 years RFS rates were 42.9 months and 31.9 %, respectively. LVI (p = 0.01), PNI (p = 0.03), HER2 (p = 0.003), progesterone receptor (PR) (p = 0.04), the presence of neoadjuvant chemotherapy (p = 0.003), adjuvant hormonotherapy (p = 0.05) were found to be related with RFS. Axillary lymph node metastasis (p = 0.05) and the presence of PNI (p = 0.009) were poor prognostic factors for early recurrent group. PR-positive tumors (p = 0.001) and luminal subtypes (p = 0.03) had instances of late recurrences significantly.
Conclusions: Clinicopathological factors predicting the recurrence time in breast cancer were important to modify adjuvant therapy.
Keywords: Breast cancer; Late recurrence; Recurrence; Recurrence-free survival.