Magnetic resonance imaging and Anatomo-pathological findings in mastectomy specimens and axillary lymph nodes in breast cancer patients

Abstract

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in women. In 2020, 685.000 deaths were registered. Survival and the probability of recurrence depends on the stage at diagnosis. Infiltrating ductal carcinoma is the most common subtype. This was an observational, retrospective and descriptive study. The universe consisted of 215 breast cancer patients. The sample obtained was of 18 cases after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Breast and axillary lymph node specimens from the patients with MRI and pathological studies were included. The statistical treatment was carried out with the RStudio software (2023) and Microsoft Excel (2016). The relationship between variables was carried out through contingency tables applying Fisher's exact test. Statistical significance level was established with the P-value (≤0.05). The results showed an average age of 58.17 ± 10.99 years. Tumor location had no difference in the laterality of the breast. The upper-outer quadrant predominated (n=10, 55.56%). The absence of multifocality (n=12, 66.67%) and the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) less than 1 (n=14, 77.78%) stood out. Infiltrating ductal carcinoma was the main diagnosis. There was not a sufficient level of statistical significance to establish dependence between tumor size, lymphovascular invasion, nuclear grade, molecular subtype, multifocality and ADC with the presence of metastasis to axillary lymph nodes (ALN). On the contrary, there was a relationship between high Ki67 expression and the molecular subtypes, HER-2- overexpressing and triple-negative (p-value 0.005). The need for multicenter studies with larger samples was concluded to establish dependency relationships between the variables of interest.