Characterization of treatments and disease course for women with breast cancer brain metastases: 5-year retrospective single institution experience

Abstract

Purpose: Around 30% of patients with breast cancer will develop brain metastases (BM). We sought to characterize the disease course, treatments and outcome for our patient cohort. Materials and Methods: We extracted clinicopathological data from electronic records from January 2015 to December 2020. Results were generated using SPSS statistics v27. Results: We identified 98 patients. Median overall survival (OS) from BM diagnosis was 3 months [hormone receptor (HR)+/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)–], 8 months [HR+/HER2+], 7 months [HR–/HER2+] and 2 months [triple negative breast cancer (TNBC)]. Whole brain radiotherapy (WBRT) (n=48, 70%) was most frequently used followed by surgery (n=15, 22%) and stereotactic radiosurgery (n=6, 8%). In patients who received WBRT alone (n=40) the median OS post WBRT was 2.6 months. Conclusion: After BM development, half of the patients had systemic therapy and 70% had local therapy, but only the HER2 subgroup had a prolonged OS likely reflecting central nervous system (CNS) activity of anti-HER2 drugs. TNBC patients had the worst prognosis. Although our cohort is small, OS was >1 year for 60% of HER2+ patients who received trastuzumab emtansine after BM development, which is encouraging for antibody drug conjugates and CNS activity. Patients who received WBRT had a higher burden of CNS disease and had an OS of less than 3 months.