Nomogram-Based Risk Stratification to Identify Patients with T3N0M0 Breast Cancer with Survival Benefit from Postmastectomy Radiotherapy.

BACKGROUND

The survival benefit of postmastectomy radiotherapy (PMRT) for patients with T3N0M0 breast cancer remains controversial. This study aimed to identify patients with a survival benefit from PMRT by developing a novel risk stratification model.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

The study recruited 2062 patients with pT3N0M0 breast cancer from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database who underwent mastectomy between 2010 and 2019. Overall survival (OS) and breast-cancer-specific survival (BCSS) prognostic nomograms based on multivariate Cox regression were constructed to quantify the survival risk and classify patients into low- and high-risk groups. Subgroup analyses were undertaken to assess the role of PMRT according to age and risk stratification.

RESULTS

In the overall cohort, PMRT was beneficial in improving OS in patients with pT3N0 breast cancer (5-year OS, non-PMRT versus PMRT: 76.6% vs. 84.2%, P < 0.001), while the benefit on BCSS was not significant (P = 0.084). On the basis of the risk stratification nomogram, in the high-risk group, PMRT improved OS in young patients by 10.1%, OS in elderly patients by 12.4%, and BCSS by 10.2% (P < 0.05), but the use of PMRT in the low-risk group did not improve OS and BCSS in all patients (P > 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

We presented a new method for quantifying risk using the nomogram to identify patients with high risk of pT3N0M0 breast cancer. This study found that older patients in the newly constructed high-risk group benefited from OS and BCSS benefits from PMRT, while for younger high-risk patients, there was only a benefit in terms of OS.