Risk factors for axillary lymph node metastases in clinical stage T1-2N0M0 breast cancer patients

Abstract

Axillary lymph node metastasis (ALNM) is commonly the earliest detectable clinical manifestation of breast cancer when distant metastasis emerges. This study aimed to explore the influencing factors of ALNM and develop models that can predict its occurrence preoperatively.Cases of sonographically visible clinical stage T1-2N0M0 breast cancers treated with breast and axillary surgery at West China Hospital were retrospectively reviewed. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to evaluate associations between ALNM and variables. Decision tree analyses were performed to construct predictive models using the C5.0 packages.Of the 1671 tumors, 541 (32.9%) showed axillary lymph node positivity on final surgical histopathologic analysis. In multivariate logistic regression analysis, tumor size (P