Prognostic & predictive factors for planning adjuvant chemotherapy of early-stage breast cancer

Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease and may present with different clinical and biological characteristics. At present, breast cancer is divided into molecular subgroups besides its histopathological classification. Decision for adjuvant chemotherapy is made based on not only histopathological characteristics but also molecular and genomic characteristics using indices, guidelines and calculators in early-stage breast cancer. Making a treatment plan through all these prognostic and predictive methods according to risk categories aims at preventing unnecessary or useless treatments. In this review, an attempt to make a general assessment of prognostic and predictive methods is made which may be used for planning individualized therapy and also the comments of the guidelines used by the oncologists worldwide on these methods.