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Perineural invasion in patients with invasive breast carcinoma
In the series composed of 377 patients with invasive breast carcinoma, perineural invasion (PNI) incidence was 25.7%. PNI was found in 13.9% of T1 tumors, 27.4% of T2 tumors, 23.8% of T3 tumors, and 68.7% of T4 tumors (p<0.001). Vascular invasion and axillary lymph node positivity ratios were significantly higher in PNI-positive patients than in PNI-negative ones (p<0.001 and p= 0.001, respectively). There was no difference between PNI-positive and -negative patients regarding locoregional recurrence and distant metastasis, as well as disease-free survival time. Few T1N0M0 patients in this series had PNI (four out of 35 patients), therefore we could not determine whether PNI might be a marker for more aggressive disease which may influence adjuvant therapy choices among this lower risk subset. However we are still collecting data. We are going to analyse the prognostic importance of PNI in this subgroup when we have sufficient number of patient.
Bibliographic reference:
Nüvit Duraker Fifth Department of Surgery, SSK Okmeydani Training Hospital, Istanbul, Turkey
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