Circulating tumor cells, disease recurrence and survival in newly diagnosed breast cancer

Table 1 Patient characteristics, demographics and relation to recurrence-free survival and breast cancer-related death.

	n	%	RFS¹ (P)	BRD² (P)		n	%	RFS (P)	BRD (P)
T stage			0.003	0.001	Ad chemo TX ⁴			0.201	0.759
T1	229	56.7			Yes	150	37.1
T2	155	38.4			No	254	62.9
T3	12	3.0			Ad rad TX ⁵			0.851	0.906
T4	8	2.0			Yes	295	73.0
N stage			0.036	0.001	No	109	27.0
N0	261	64.6			Ad hor TX ⁶			0.921	0.644
N1	99	24.5			Yes	192	47.5
N2	42	10.4			No	212	52.5
N3	2	0.5			Age	Continuous	0.905	0.335
Stage			0.008	0.001	Menopausal status			0.541	0.773
I	178	44.1			Pre	119	29.5
IIA	122	30.2			Post	212	52.5
IIB	53	12.3			CTC			0.029	0.001
IIIA	40	10.4			Yes	76	18.8
IIIB	9	1.7			No	328	81.2
IIIC	2	0.5			Recurrence
Histology			0.933	0.440	Yes	54	13.4
Lobular	44	10.9			No	350	86.6
Ductal	341	84.4			Mortality
Other	19	4.7			Yes	34	8.4
Differentiation			<0.001	<0.001	No	370	19.6
I	98	24.3			BC mortality ⁷
II	185	45.8			Yes	25	6.2
III	121	30.0			No	379	93.8
ER ¹			0.029	<0.001	Follow-up
Pos	342	84.7			min	6 months
Neg	62	15.3			max	90 months
PR ²			0.061	0.001	mean	48.6 months
Pos	290	71.8			median	48 months
Neg	114	28.2
Her2/neu ³			0.024	0.010
Pos	81	20.0
Neg	323	80.0

¹Estrogen receptor status, ²progestrone receptor status, ³Her2/neu receptor status, ⁴adjuvant chemotherapy, ⁵adjuvant radiation therapy, ⁶adjuvant hormonal therapy, ⁷breast cancer- related mortality. BRD, breast cancer-related death; CTC, circulating tumor cells; RFS, recurrence-free survival.