Locoregional therapy in luminal-like and HER2-rich patients with de novo stage IV breast cancer

Abstract

Background Locoregional therapy is rarely the standard of care for De Novo stage IV breast cancer but usually used for palliation of symptoms. This retrospective study aimed to determine whether surgery or radiation would contribute to survival benefit for this group of patients by examining the survival outcome through the disease molecular subtypes. Materials and methods We reviewed 246 patients with de novo stage IV (M1) breast cancer treated at our hospital between 1990 and 2009. Multivariable Cox Analysis was used to evaluate the survival association with subtypes and clinicopathologic factors. Results Patients with luminal-like subtype are mostly premonopausal (66.9%, P = 0.0002), with abnormal CA 15-3 level at initial diagnosis (58.7%, P = 0.01), a higher rate of bony metastases (78.5%, P = 0.02), and a lower rate of liver metastases (22.3%, P < 0.0001). Patients with HER2-rich and triple negative showed higher rate of nuclear grade III, up to 35% and 40%, respectively (P = 0.01). There is no difference in treatment options patient received: systemic chemotherapy up to 82.2 ∼ 95% (p = 0.0705), locoregional treatment up to 40.0 ∼ 51.2% (P-0.2571). The median overall survival was 23.1 months: luminal-like subtype 39.6 months, HER2-rich subtype 17.9 months, and triple negative subtype 13.3 months, respectively (P < 0.0001). In multivariate analysis, poor prognostic factors included HER2- rich (HR 2.2, P < 0.0001) and triple negative subtype (HR 4.3, P < 0.0001), liver metastasis (HR 1.9, P < 0.0001), lung metastasis (HR 1.4, P = 0.0153), and bone metastasis (HR 1.8, P = 0.0007). Subgroup analysis revealed that local treatments (surgery or radiotherapy) to primary/regional tumors achieved better survival in patients with luminal-like (3-year survival 66.4% vs. 34.4%, p = 0.0001) and HER2-rich (3-year survival 41.6% vs. 8.8%, p = 0.0012) subtypes, but not in triple negative subtype (P = 0.9575). Conclusions For better survival outcome, De Novo Stage IV breast cancer patients with luminal-like or HER2-rich subtype should be offered local treatments when surgery and/or radiotherapy presents an option for proper control of the primary and regional tumors. © 2013 Chen et al.