Breast cancer (BC) is the second most common cancer worldwide and the first among women. If early diagnosed and treated, this disease has a good prognosis. However, it is believed that 90 % of all patients who have had cancer died due to metastatic disease, which highlights the need for a marker which allows the detection of latent cancer cells spread from the primary tumor. The objective of this study was to investigate the expression of survinin in peripheral blood of patients with breast cancer at diagnosis and during chemotherapy aiming correlation with minimal residual disease, clinical and pathological findings. The study included 40 patients with breast cancer and 12 healthy donors as a comparison group. Survinin expression was verified by real-time PCR. For diagnosis, survinin expression cutoff point was 1.05; considering this cutoff point, we obtained a test sensitivity of 85.3 %, specificity of 75.0 %, positive predictive value of 90.6 %, negative predictive value of 64.3 %, and accuracy of 82.6 %. There was statistical significance between groups (patients × control group), presenting to patients a significantly higher value than the control group (p < 0.001). Patients that presented at the diagnosis a survinin gene expression ≥ 1.05 are 17 times more likely to develop metastatic disease.