Abstract:

Objective

To investigate the clinicopathological features and prognosis of the patients with breast invasive micropapaillary carcinoma (IMPC).

Methods

The clinical, imaging, and pathological findings, treatment and prognosis of 97 IMPC patients treated in General Hospital of PLA from January 2005 to May 2015 were retrospectively analyzed. The relationship between lymph node metastasis and clinicopathological features of IMPC patients. The univariate analysis was performed using Pearson χ² test, multivariate analysis using Logistic regression model. The prognosis of IMPC patients was analyzed by Kaplan-Meier and COX method.

Results

IMPC accounted for 3% of the patients with breast cancer in the same period (97/3231).The median age was 50 years old (28-89 years).The rate of axillary lymph node metastasis was 72.2%(70/97) and the lymphatic invasion rate was 40.2%(39/97). The univariate analysis showed that the rate of lymph node metastasis in the patients with histological grade 3 was significantly higher than that in the patients with histological grade 2(78.9% vs 47.6%,χ²=8.039,P=0.005).and there was a significant difference in lymph node metastasis rate among different molecular types of IMPC(χ² =8.141,P=0.033). Multivariate analysis showed that histological grade was an independent risk factor for lymph node metastasis(OR=0.165,95%CI:0.053-0.517,P=0.002). The follow-up results showed that 5-year overall survival was 92%. COX analysis showed that the patient's age,tumor diameter,histological grade,pTNM stage,molecular type,vascular tumor thrombus, lymph node metastasis and Ki67 index were not the high risk factors of overall survival.

Conclusion

IMPC is a variant of breast carcinoma with high risk of invasion, and the high incidence of lymph node metastasis may be related to the histological stage and instinctive molecular characteristics of tumor.

Key words: Breast neoplasms, Pathology, clinical, Lymphatic metastasis, Prognosis