Impact of breast surgery on survival of patients with stage IV breast cancer: a SEER population-based propensity score matching analysis

BACKGROUND: Breast surgery for stage IV breast cancer remains controversial. The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of breast surgery on survival of stage IV breast cancer patients based on the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database from 2010 to 2015. METHODS: In total, 13,034 patients were selected and divided into surgery and non-surgery groups. Univariate and multivariable analyses were conducted to determine factors related to survival. Propensity score matching method was utilized to achieve balanced covariates across different groups. One-to-one (1:1) PSM was conducted to construct a matched sample consisting of pairs of surgery and non-surgery subjects. Breast cancer-specific survival (BCSS) and overall survival (OS) of the two groups were assessed by Kaplan–Meier plots and Cox proportional hazard regression models. Stratified analysis according to different variables was also performed. RESULTS: Patients treated with breast surgery were more likely to be younger, smaller tumor size, more advanced nodal status, higher histology grade and higher proportion of bone-only metastasis. Those who received chemotherapy and radiotherapy also tended to be treated with surgery. After adjustment for potential confounders, breast surgery group exhibited a better survival both in BCSS (HR = 0.557, 95% CI [0.523–0.594], p < 0.001) and OS (HR = 0.571, 95% CI [0.537–0.607], p < 0.001). After propensity score matching, the surgery and non-surgery group consisted of 2,269 patients respectively. The median survival time was 43 months for the surgery group and 27 months for the non-surgery group. Kaplan–Meier curves indicated that breast surgery could clearly improve both the BCSS and OS for patients with stage IV breast cancer. On multivariate analysis, surgery group was associated with a better survival compared with the non-surgery group (BCSS: HR = 0.542, 95% CI [0.499–0.589], p < 0.001; OS: HR = 0.555, 95% CI [0.512–0.601], p < 0.001). Furthermore, this survival advantage persisted in all subgroups irrespective of age, race, tumor size, nodal status, histology grade, molecular subtype, chemotherapy status, radiotherapy status or status of distant metastasis. CONCLUSION: Our study provided additional evidence that patients with stage IV breast cancer could benefit from breast surgery and it might play a more important role in multimodality therapy.