Combined Treatment Of Early Breast Cancer With Bone Metastasis

Objective: To investigate some clinico-pathological parameters related to bone metastasis in early breast cancers after radical mastectomy and look for effective therapies for them. Methods: There were 332 cases of early breast cancer treated with radical surgery from 1992 to 2000 in Dept. of Oncology, 2nd affiliated hospital, Zhejiang Univ. Medical school, and 56 cases were diagnosed with bone metastasis during follow-up. Some clinico-pathological parameters like primary tumor size, metastasis of axillary lymph node (LN), ER / PR status and memo-pausal condition were analyzed for relationship to bone metastasis in these patients. The effectiveness of several combined therapies for bone metastatic lesion was compared. Results: The prevalence of bone metastasis in early breastcancer in our study was 15.7% (52/332), the patients with LN metastasis had higher prevalence of bone metastasis than those without LN metastasis. (20.2%VS8.5%, p<0.05). Whereas for tumor size (<2cm or >2cm), ER/PR (positive or negative), memo-pausal condition ( prememopausal or postmemopausal ), there were no significant differences between each groups (9.09%VS17.3%,p>0.05;12.4%VS13.1%,p>0.05; 11.2%VS14.2%, p>0.05; 16%VS15.3%,p>0.05). Overall response rate for several combined treatments of bone metastasis was 84.6%, of which the combination of chemotherapy and endocrine therapy was the best one in our study. Conclusions: It was revealed in our study that axillary LN metastasis was positively related to bone metastasis. While others such as tumor size , ER/PR status and memo-pausal condition, did not show any relationship between them. Our study suggested that the combination of chemotherapy and endocrine therapy was the best choice for treating bone metastasis in early breast cancer.