Effect of postmastectomy radiotherapy on T1-2N1M0 triple-negative breast cancer

BACKGROUND: The effect of postmastectomy radiotherapy (PMRT) on T1-2N1M0 triple-negative breast cancers (TNBC) remains unclear. The population-based study aimed to investigate the survival outcomes of T1-2N1M0 TNBC patients who underwent PMRT or not. METHODS: We selected 1743 patients with T1-2N1M0 TNBC who underwent mastectomy between 2010 and 2015 through the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database. After propensity score matching (PSM), the PMRT and no-PMRT groups consisted of 586 matched patients, respectively. The Kaplan-Meier method was applied to calculate breast cancer-specific survival (BCSS) and cox proportional hazard model was used to determine the prognostic factors of T1-2N1M0 TNBC. RESULTS: The 5-year BCSS for the PMRT and no-PMRT groups was 79.1% and 74.7%, respectively. Analysis showed that in patients with three nodes positive, radiotherapy could significantly improve BCSS (HR = 0.396, 95% CI = 0.175–0.900, P = 0.027), but it brought no significant advantage in BCSS in patients with one or two nodes positive (HR = 1.061, 95% CI = 0.725–1.552, P = 0.761; HR = 0.657, 95% CI = 0.405–1.065, P = 0.088). In addition, PMRT improves the BCSS in TNBC patients with T2 tumor concomitant with three positive lymph nodes (HR = 0.343, 95% CI = 0.132–0.890, P = 0.028). CONCLUSION: TNBC patients with T2 tumor concomitant with three positive lymph nodes can benefit from PMRT.