Positive estrogen receptor status is a poor prognostic factor in node-negative breast cancer: An observational study in Asian patients

This study evaluated the outcomes and prognostic factors for breast cancer according to initial lymph node (LN) status. Among patients with LN-negative breast cancer, we also focused on the prognostic value of estrogen receptor (ER) status. Medical records were retrospectively reviewed for 715 patients who underwent curative surgery for breast cancer between January 2005 and December 2015 at a single Korean institution. We evaluated factors that were associated with metastasis-free survival (MFS) according to LN status. Among the 715 patients (age: 28–87 years), 458 patients (64.1%) did not have axillary LN metastasis. Relative to patients without LN metastasis, patients with LN metastasis had larger tumor sizes and higher histological grades. Among patients with no LN metastasis, ER positivity was associated with non-significantly poorer MFS than ER negativity (mean survival: 138.90 months vs. 146.99 months, p = .17), and patients with LN-negative ER-positive disease had MFS rates of 91.7% at 5 years and 74.5% at 10 years. Among patients with LN-negative ER-positive disease, a poor prognosis was significantly associated with larger tumor size (≥2 cm, P = .03) and older age (≥50 years, P = .03). These results indicate that the risk of metastasis increases over time for patients with LN-negative ER-positive breast cancer, and especially for older patients or patients with larger tumors.