Prediction of nodal metastasis and prognosis of breast cancer by ANN-based assessment of tumour size and p53, Ki-67 and steroid receptor expression.

Background: Tumour stage and the appropriate course of treatment in patients with breast cancer are primarily characterized by the state of metastasis in the axillary lymph nodes. In recent years, substantial research has focused on the prediction of lymph node status based on various pathological and molecular markers in order to obviate the necessity to carry out axillary dissection. In the present study, artificial neural network (ANN) is employed as the analysis platform to examine the prognostic significance of a group of well-established prognostic markers for breast cancer outcome prediction in terms of nodal status.