Does Regional Lymph Node Irradiation Improve the Outcome of N0 and pN0 Breast Cancer?

ABSTRACT

This study compares the outcome of 76 patients with N0 breast carcinoma, node-negative at axillary lymph node dissection (pN0) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NeoCT), treated with (RLNI+, 39 patients) or without (RLNI−, 37 patients) elective regional lymph node areas irradiation. For RLNI− and RLNI+ groups respectively at 10 years, survival without local-regional recurrence was 95% and 91% (p = .59), survival without distant metastasis was 97% and 78% (p = .018) and overall survival was 96% and 75% (p = .013). Clinical size < 4 cm was a strong pronostic factor.

Keywords: :

• Neoadjuvant chemotherapy
• Radiation therapy
• Breast cancer
• Node negative

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to gratefully acknowledge useful discussions and help from Alain Fourquet and editing by Dhara MacDermed.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

Any actual or potential conflicts of interest do not exist.