The authors report on 1,017 consecutive breast cancer cases without symptomatic metastases staged by means of chest X-ray (CXR), skeletal survey (BXR) and bone scintigraphy (BS). Occult metastases (DM) detection rate was 0.88 %: 0.29 % for lung and 0.59 % for bone DM. The detection rate was correlated with clinical stage: 0.36 % for stage I, 0.20 % for stage II, 0.26 % for stages I and II, and 2.77 % for stage III cases. The sensitivity based on DM cases prevalent or surfacing within 6 months of follow-up was 0.30 for CXR, 0.22 for BXR and 0.55 for BS; specificity was 0.99, 0.98 and 0.90, respectively. The study confirms the possibility of early detection of DM with preoperative staging, but the extremely low detection rates in stage I and II cancers do not advise such a routine procedure. The higher detection rate of DM may suggest adoption of the routine staging procedure in stage III cancers. In these cases, although no evidence is available of a favorable prognostic impact of early detection and treatment of DM, an unnecessary mastectomy could be avoided in about 3 % of cases in the presence of DM detected by the staging procedure.
Rs1008805 polymorphism of CYP19A1 gene is associated with the efficacy of hormone therapy in stage I‑II and operable stage III breast cancer
