Objectives: To determine factors associated with the survival of patients with metastatic recurrent triple-negative breast cancer (mrTNBC).
Methods: Initial metastatic recurrent (during or after therapy) patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) confirmed by post-operate pathology in the West China Hospital of Sichuan University were followed up. The accumulative survival rates after recurrence were calculated using Kaplan-Meier method and differences were tested using log-rank tests. Cox proportional hazards regression analyses were performed to identify independent predictors of survival rates.
Results: A total of 142 patients were included in this study. They were followed up on average 41.9 months (range: 5.1-189.5 months), and had median post-recurrence survival time of 22.0 months.Tumor diameter, lymph node status, TNM stage, disease-free interval (DFI), numbers of recurrent lesions, brain metastasis, liver metastasis and the rapeutic patterns were associated with the survival of patients. The Cox proportional hazards regression model identified multi-lesions recurrence ( P=0.004), DFI≤12 months ( P=0.010), brain metastasis ( P=0.037) and single-modal therapy (SMT) ( P<0.001) as independent risk predictors of post-recurrence survival. In the patients with local recurrence, multi-modal therapy (MMT) had 53.0%post-recurrence 3-year survival rate compared with 11.4% of SMT ( P=0.024). Similar results were also found in the patients with distant metastases (post-recurrence 3-year survival rate 58.1% for MMT versus 29.3% for SMT, P=0.003).
Conclusions: Multi-lesions recurrence, short DFI and brain metastasis are independent risk predictors, while MMT is a protective factor for the survival of patients with mrTNBC.
Keywords: Brain metastasis; Disease-free interval; Multi-modal therapy; Prognosticanalysis; Triple-negative breast cancer.