Impact of neoadjuvant chemotherapy in the surgical treatment of breast cancer

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy is an increasingly frequent option in the treatment of breast cancer. One of the goals of neoadjuvant chemotherapy is to change the indication for a mastectomy to a conservative surgery, and for axillary lymphadenectomy to sentinel lymph node assessment. Methods: This was an observational, cross-sectional, retrospective study that evaluated response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer patients undergoing surgical treatment. Patients were divided into three groups when the surgery indication was changed after neoadjuvant chemotherapy downgrade, unchanged, upgrade. Results: During the study period, 355 patients were included with a mean age of 55 years. Neoadjuvant chemotherapy promoted a downgrade in 38.7% of patients with indication for mastectomy and an upgrade in 36.8% of patients with indication for conservative surgery; in the total group, the maintenance of indication for surgery was 62,2%. In the axillary approach, lymphadenectomy downgrade was 6.9% and sentinel lymph node biopsy upgrade was 34% with 27% being due to positivity and 7% due to disease progression. Multivariate analysis found a significant difference between clinical staging and change in surgical indication for both breast and axilla (p<0.0001). In the multivariate analysis of pathologic complete response and change of indication for breast and axilla surgery, triple negative and HER-2-positive tumors showed a significant difference (p<0.0001). Conclusions: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy was able to perform a downgrade of breast and axilla surgery in few patients and there was no relationship between the change of indication and pathologic complete response. (AU)