Prognosis of node-positive breast cancer patients who underwent parasternal lymph node biopsy during surgery followed by doxorubicin- or mitoxantrone-containing adjuvant chemotherapy

The authors examined the survival rates of 60 patients with breast cancer w ho underwent parasternal lymph node biopsy during surgery with axillary lym ph node dissection and had histologically confirmed axillary node metastasi s followed by adjuvant doxorubicin- or mitoxantrone-containing combination chemotherapy to ascertain whether administration of anthracycline or its an alogue improved the prognosis of both axillary and parasternal node-positiv e patients, The overall survival rate (OS) for the parasternal node-positiv e patients (n = 13, 21.7%) was 30,6%, and relapse-free survival rate (RFS) fell to 0% at the 104-month follow-up. Although the survival rate for all a xillary node-positive patients was similar to those in previous reports, th e OS and RFS for both axillary and parasternal node-positive patients were significantly worse than that for axillary node-positive and parasternal no de-negative patients, despite treatment with adjuvant doxorubicin- or mitox antrone-containing combination chemotherapy, Other intensive adjuvant treat ment strategies are needed to reduce distant metastases for high-risk breas t cancer patients having both axillary and parasternal nodes positive.