Biomarker phenotyping drives clinical management in axillary sentinel node: A retrospective study on women with primary breast cancer in 2002

The current study examined if cancer biomarker phenotyping could predict the clinical/pathological status of axillary nodes in women with primary breast cancer. Primary breast cancers from 2002 were analyzed for tumor size, estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PgR), Ki.67MIB expression and Her2/neu amplification. Relationships between the clinical and pathological status of the axilla and the biological subtypes classification were analyzed using univariate, multivariate and regression tree analysis. A total of 65% of women with axillary nodes clinically involved had complete axillary node dissection (ALND) while 705 women with clinically negative axillary underwent sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB), 18.5% of the latter had at least one pathologically SLNB involved node. Multivariate analysis revealed that the Luminal A subtype was significantly associated (OR 0.62; P<10-9) with clinical negative axilla while HER2pos/not Luminal was associated with clinical positivity (OR 1.71; P<0.01). No significant association between biological subtypes and SLNB status was demonstrated. Regression tree analysis revealed that subgroups with significantly different probability of SLNB status were separated according to tumor size and PgR values. In conclusion, the current study demonstrated that biomarker breast cancer phenotyping is significantly associated with clinical status of axillary nodes but not with pathological involvement of nodes at SLNB. Regression tree analysis could represent a valid attempt to individualize some patients subgroups candidate to different surgical axilla approaches.