Efficacy of neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with triple-negative breast cancer and prognostic analysis

Objective: To investigate the response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and the prognostic factors. Methods: The clinicopathologic features, the response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy, the disease-free survival and overall survival, and the prognostic factors were retrospectively analyzed in 80 hospitalized patinets with TNBC receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy between January 2006 and December 2008. Results: Of the 80 TNBC patients receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy, the clinical complete response (cCR) and the pathological complete response (pCR) were 46.25% (37/80) and 38.75% (31/80), respectively. The patients with non-pCR (61.25%) had a higher stage of lymph node and an advanced clinical stage before chemotherapy, and they were more likely to receive non-anthracyclin-based neoadjuvant regimens. The 5-year disease-free survival rates of pCR and non-pCR patients were 80.65% and 53.06%, respectively (P = 0.008), and the 5-year overall survival rates of pCR and non-pCR patients were 93.55% and 65.34%, respectively (P = 0.004). Multivariate analysis showed that pCR was an independent prognostic factor. Conclusion: Patients with TNBC were more sensitive to neoadjvant chemotherapy. The regimens including anthracycline is helpful to achieve pCR. TNBC patients with pCR may have a better prognosis than non-pCR. DOI:10.3781/j.issn.1000-7431.2014.05.011