Comparison of clinicopathological characteristics of lymph node positive and lymph node negative breast cancer

OBJECTIVE To record various clinicopathological characteristics of breast cancer (BC) in our population and to find an association between these characteristics and axillary nodal metastasis. METHODS This cross-sectional study included 150 BC patients from two tertiary care centers in Karachi from 15(th) February, 2013 to 31(st) March, 2015. Frequencies, percentages, and odds ratio were estimated to find out an association between various clinicopathological characteristics and lymph node status using SPSS version 20. RESULTS Approximately 75.4% patients had axillary lymph node metastasis ('1-3' LN = 34.4% and '>3' LN = 44%). Menopausal status (p <0.013), tumor grades ('II' p <0.03; 'III' p <0.01), and stages ('III' p <0.002; 'IV' p <0.0001), tumor sizes ('T2' p <0.014; 'T3' p <0.002), perineural invasion (PNI) (p <0.007), lymphovascular invasion (LVI) (p <0.0001), and skin and nipple invasion (p <0.024) were significant predictors for '>3' LN metastasis. Association of these variables with '1-3' LN involvement was insignificant. CONCLUSION Clinical spectrum of BC remains unchanged in 2016 with most of the patients presenting with high-grade, late-stage advanced disease. Moreover, clinicopathological variables, especially primary tumor size, tumor stage and lymphovascular invasion were significant predictors of >3 lymph node metastasis with high accuracy.