Background: Early breast cancer cases usually have good prognosis and long-
term survival. but a subgroup of them develop locoregional failure. Studying
those cases have shown that they have multiple risk factors such as tumor site
and size, menopausal and hormonal status, also presence or absence of
lymphovascular invasion (LVI). Many radiotherapists still confused about
giving adjuvant radiotherapy to that group of patients. This study seeks to
document our experience about detecting the high-risk factors for local failure in
T1-T2 N0 breast cancer cases after mastectomy. Also, to identify if this
subgroup could have a benefit from post mastectomy radiation therapy.
Methods: This is a retrospective study of 588 cases of node-negative early (T1-
2) invasive breast carcinoma. After surgery and systemic treatment and when
considering adjuvant radiation therapy, 310 cases received post mastectomy
radiation therapy while 278 cases did not. Risk factors were identified for all
cases which include; (1) medial site tumors, (2) size more than 4 cm, (3)
premenopausal status (4) positive LVI (5) triple negative cases. cases with more
than 2 risk factors were also examined in both groups to assess the effect of
accumulated risk factors. Time of local failure if happened and duration of
disease-free survival were reported.
Results: Patients characteristics are matched between the 2 groups. At the end
of the study, 18 cases (5.8%) in group 1 developed local recurrence compared
with 29 cases (10.4%) in group 2 with 0.039 P value. The incidence of LRR is
higher in cases presented with risk factors specially when more than 2.
Considering the effect of PMRT; disease free survival was better in all risky
subgroups in group 1 compared to group 2. Although P value was not
significant when assessing every risk factor alone, but it was significant when
there were more than 2 risk factors (mean disease-free survival was 96.28
months in group 1 compared to 82.76 months in group 2 with 0.015 P value).
Conclusion: we concluded that there are multiple risk factors for locoregional
recurrence in early node-negative breast cancer patients after mastectomy. Cases
presented with those factors (specially when more than 2) could have a benefit
from post mastectomy radiation therapy