Long-term Survival Outcomes of Primary Breast Cancer in Women With or Without Preoperative Magnetic Resonance Imaging: A Matched Cohort Study.

AIMS

To investigate whether preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in patients with primary breast cancer is predictive of disease-free (DFS) and overall survival and to determine the prognostic factors indicating survival.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This retrospective study was approved by the institutional review board and the requirement for informed consent was waived. From 2009 to 2010, 828 women with primary breast cancer and preoperative MRI were matched with 1613 women without such imaging. Patients were matched with regards to 25 patient and tumour-related covariates. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to investigate the time to recurrence and to estimate the hazard ratio for preoperative MRI. Log-rank tests and Cox proportional hazards survival analysis were carried out on total recurrence DFS and overall survival in the unmatched datasets.

RESULTS

In total, 799 matched pairs were available for survival analysis. The MRI group showed a tendency towards better survival outcome; however, there were no significant differences in DFS and overall survival. Age at diagnosis (DFS hazard ratio = 0.98; overall survival hazard ratio = 1.04), larger tumour size (DFS hazard ratio = 1.01; overall survival hazard ratio = 1.02), triple negative breast cancer (DFS hazard ratio = 2.64; overall survival hazard ratio = 3.44) and the presence of lymphovascular invasion (DFS hazard ratio = 2.12; overall survival hazard ratio = 2.70) were independent significant variables for worse DFS and overall survival.

CONCLUSION

Preoperative MRI did not result in an improvement in a patient's outcome. Age at diagnosis, tumour size, molecular subtype and lymphovascular invasion were significant independent factors affecting both DFS and overall survival.