Single centre clinical study of a Greek patient population with triple-negative breast cancer

Aim

The aim of this study is to describe the characteristics of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) among patients of a Greek population and investigate the extent to which international TNBC patterns apply to the particular ethnic group.

Material and methods

In this single-centre, retrospective study, medical records of 1455 female patients undergoing breast cancer surgery from 1999 to 2013 were examined in order to identify TNBC patients and evaluate their clinicopathologic characteristics.

Results

In total, 91 TNBC patients (6.3%) were identified, with a median age of 50 years, 91.2% of whom had high-grade tumours. Only nine relapses and four deaths occurred during the study period. Overexpression of Ki-67 and p53 was observed in 95.5% and 76.8% of cases, respectively. Significant correlation was found between relapse and age at first breast surgery (p-value = 0.007) and also between Ki-67 and lymph vessel metastasis (p-value = 0.02).

Conclusions

Our study revealed that in this specific population of Greek patients with breast cancer, TNBCs are characterized by aggressive prognostic factors such as increased expression of Ki-67, EGFR, mutations of p53, high grade and presence of metastatic disease to the regional lymph nodes with concomitant lymph vessel dissemination. The relationship between young age and TNBC reported in other international studies was not observed here. On the other hand, it seems that there is a strong correlation between age at first diagnosis and age at the time of relapse.