Purpose: The incidence of breast cancer in young women (BCYW) has increased in recent decades. Malignant disease in this subset is characterized by its aggressiveness and poor prognosis. Ovarian function suppression (OFS) in these patients improves survival especially in hormone receptor-positive (HR +) cases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMolecular testing contributes to improving the diagnosis of indeterminate thyroid nodules (ITNs). ThyroidPrint® is a ten-gene classifier aimed to rule out malignancy in ITN. Post-validation studies are necessary to determine the real-world clinical benefit of ThyroidPrint® in patients with ITN.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Latin American reports on genetic cancer risk assessments are scarce. In Chile, current breast cancer (BC) guidelines do not define strategies for germline genetic testing. Our study sought to quantify the disparities in access to genetic testing in Chilean BC patients, according to international standards and their clinical characteristics to explore improvement strategies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Latin American (LA) studies on triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and their characteristics are scarce. This forces physicians to make clinical decisions based on data obtained from studies that include non-Hispanic patients. Our study sought to obtain local epidemiological data, including risk factors and clinical outcomes from a Chilean BC registry.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Recently, contrast-enhanced mammography (CEM) has emerged as a reliable alternative to breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for the assessment of pathological response in breast cancer patients. Our study sought to determine the diagnostic accuracy of CEM to predict pathological complete response (pCR) in patients who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT).
Methods: We retrieved the medical records of patients who underwent NACT at our institution.
Purpose: The implementation of national breast cancer (BC) screening programs in Latin America has been rather inconsistent. Instead, most countries have opted for "opportunistic" mammogram screenings on the population at risk. Our study assessed and compared epidemiological, clinical factors, and survival rates associated with BC detected by screening (SDBC) or self-detected/symptomatic (non-SDBC) in Chilean female patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Breast cancer (BC) is the leading cause of cancer death for Chilean women. About 11% of cases are triple-negative (TN) BC. These are characterised by poor prognosis, higher risk of early recurrence and visceral dissemination versus other BC subtypes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: About 80% of breast cancer (BC) cases express estrogen receptor (ER), which has been correlated with good prognosis and response to estrogen deprivation Aim: To characterize ER positive advanced BC (ABC) patients treated at our institution assessing the impact of clinical pre-sentation (stage IV, de novo disease at diagnosis versus systemic recurrence) and BC subtype on survival rates.
Material And Methods: We evaluated 211 ER+ advanced BC (ABC) patients, treated between 1997 and 2017.
Results: The median overall survival (OS) was 37 months.
Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has changed health systems across the world, both in general hospitals and in oncology institutes or centres.For cancer specialists, particularly breast cancer (BC), the COVID-19 pandemic represents a combination of challenges since the hospital resources and staff have become more limited; this has obliged oncology specialists to seek a consensus and establish which patients with BC require more urgent attention and which patients can wait until there is a better control of this pandemic. The health system in Latin America has some special characteristics; in some of the countries, there are shortages which limit access to several specialities (surgery, clinical oncology and radiotherapy) in some regions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBreast cancer (BC) is the most common malignancy in women. We retrieved medical records from >2,000 Chilean BC patients over the 1997-2018 period. The objective was to assess changes in clinical presentation or prognosis of our patients throughout these 20 years of practice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Tumor response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) in breast cancer (BC) patients is a predictor for overall survival. The aim of our study was to determine a relationship between the neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) prior to NAC, BC subtypes and the probability of a pathologic complete response (pCR). Materials and Methods: Medical records were collected retrospectively from Centro de Cancer at Red Salud UC-Christus.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMetastatic breast cancer (MBC) management is based on systemic treatment (ST), while the local therapy role remains controversial. We present the case of a 36-year-old woman with a diagnosis of hormone receptor-positive and human epidermal growth factor receptor type 2-positive breast cancer and isolated sternal metastasis, who received neoadjuvant ST with complete remission and later primary tumour surgery. Oligometastatic patients are a subgroup of MBC that can benefit from aggressive local therapies, even with curative intent.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The optimal management of breast lesions with atypia (BLA), detected in percutaneous biopsies after screening mammograms, is a controversial issue. The aim of this paper is to compare histological diagnosis by percutaneous biopsy with the results of the surgical biopsy of these lesions and to analyse the changes to clinical approach this would imply.
Method: A retrospective study was carried out on patients operated on between June 2007 and June 2017 with a diagnosis of BLA.
Background: HER2+ breast cancer (BC) subtype overexpresses the Human Epidermal growth factor Receptor type-2 (HER2) and is characterized by its aggressiveness and its high sensitivity to monoclonal antibody-based HER2-targeted therapies.
Aim: To assess the prognosis and evaluate the impact of novel anti-HER2 therapies on advanced HER2+ BC patients treated at our institution over the last decades.
Material And Methods: Analysis of the patient database at a cancer center of a university hospital.
Background: Although fairly uncommon, loco-regional recurrence in breast cancer (BC) has major consequences for the patient. Several predictors for locoregional have been previously reported from large randomized clinical trials mainly from Europe & North America; data from other geographical areas are somewhat scarce. Here we performed a retrospective review of medical records in a single academic center in Chile, searching for predictors of breast tumor recurrence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Women who have mutations in BRCA genes have a high risk of developing breast cancer. Therefore, multiple preventive strategies have been proposed, within which is prophylactic mastectomy. Considering physical and psychological effects of surgery, the controversy is established as to whether the preventive effect exceeds that of active vigilance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Breast cancer can be classified into subtypes based on immunohistochemical markers, with Ki67 expression levels being used to divide luminal BC tumors in luminal A and B subtypes; however, Ki67 is not routinely determined due to a lack of standardization. Objective: To evaluate histological grade and Eliminate: the mitotic index to determine if they can be used as an alternative method to Ki67 staining for luminal subtype definition. Methods: We evaluated estrogen receptor positive breast cancer tissue samples.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIdentifying founder mutations in and in specific populations constitute a valuable opportunity for genetic screening. Several studies from different populations have reported recurrent and/or founder mutations representing a relevant proportion of mutation carriers. In Latin America, only few founder mutations have been described.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAsian Pac J Cancer Prev
December 2016
Background: Pathological factors, based mainly on immunohistochemistry (IHC) and histological differentiation, are mostly used to differentiate breast cancer (BC) subtypes. Our present aim was to describe the characteristics and survival of a relapsing BC patient cohort based on clinico-pathologic subtypes determined for the primary tumors. Methods: We used a clinico- pathological definition of BC subtypes based on histological grade (HG), estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PgR),and epidermal growth factor receptor type 2 (HER2) expression assessed by IHC.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: The white blood cell count is one of the most sensitive markers associated with inflammation. The neutrophil/lymphocyte count ratio may be an independent factor for breast cancer mortality.
Aim: To assess the predictive value of the neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio for mortality in breast cancer.
Background: Array CGH analysis of breast tumors has contributed to the identification of different genomic profiles in these tumors. Loss of DNA repair by BRCA1 functional deficiency in breast cancer has been proposed as a relevant contribution to breast cancer progression for tumors with no germline mutation. Identifying the genomic alterations taking place in BRCA1 not expressing tumors will lead us to a better understanding of the cellular functions affected in this heterogeneous disease.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Mechanisms that lead to the reduced expression of BRCA1 in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) tumors are not fully understood. A possible cause is overexpression of miR-146a and miR-638, which regulate BRCA1 expression in other cancers.
Objective: To evaluate the expression of these microRNAs in relation to BRCA1 expression in TNBC tumors.
Background: Pathological complete response (pCR) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NCT) in breast cancer (BC) identifies patients with good prognosis.
Aim: To assess if the clinico-pathological subtype, determined by classic immunohistochemical (IHC) markers, is able to predict pCR and prognosis in BC patients treated with NCT.
Material And Methods: One hundred thirty three BC patients aged 24-80 years, were treated with NCT.
Asian Pac J Cancer Prev
December 2015
Background: Young onset breast cancer (BC) has a worse outcome as compared to in the elderly. However, some studies have shown that BC in the elderly, despite indolent features, does also cause increase in mortality. In an attempt to compare clinic-pathological characteristics, BC subtypes and survival in patients with BC presenting at extremes of age, we performed a retrospective study.
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