Frequency of First Metastatic Events in Breast Cancer: Implications for Sequencing of Systemic and Local-Regional Treatment

Abstract

PURPOSE: The sequencing of treatment for early breast cancer is controversial. The purpose of this study was to quantify the risk of delaying surgery, using estimates of the frequency of first metastases from breast primary tumors. PATIENTS AND METHODS: The probability that 560 (node-negative), 657 (with one to three positive nodes), and 505 (with more than three positive nodes) women treated without adjuvant chemotherapy would be free of distant disease at presentation was fit to a mathematical model of the seeding of distant metastases and combined with estimates of the growth rate to calculate the frequency of first distant disseminations per month. RESULTS: Frequencies of first distant metastases were approximately 1% to 2% per month, 2% to 4% per month, and 3% to 6% per month in T1 patients who were node-negative, had one to three positive nodes, or more than three positive nodes, respectively. As a result, the typical patient with T1 disease, who has a 70% to 80% chance of being free of distant disease, runs a 1% to 4% risk of distant dissemination for each month surgery is delayed. Assuming a 30% reduction in mortality caused by adjuvant chemotherapy, the model predicts that T1 patients treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy would potentially have a higher rate of distant metastasis development than those treated with an initial surgical resection followed by adjuvant chemotherapy. CONCLUSION: We formulate the hypothesis that optimal sequencing of surgery and systemic treatment of breast cancer may be size-dependent, with a disadvantage or no benefit from neoadjuvant treatment for T1 patients but an increasing benefit with increasing size of the primary tumor.