The Relationship Between Tumor Budding and Patient's Survival in Breast Cancer.

INTRODUCTION: Breast cancer is a severe life-threatening condition in which many women are involved yearly. One factor that has recently been noticed and investigated as a diagnostic predictor of this type of cancer is the number of tumor buds and the relation of this factor with a patient's survival rate.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study includes 150 female patients over 18 years old with a mean age of 53.99 ± 12.56 years old with breast cancer, which was diagnosed at various medical centers, including Rouhani Hospital itself, and referred to Rouhani Hospital Medical Center, Babol, Iran. The number of intratumoral and peritumoral buds in patients' microscopic slides were archived and evaluated along with tumor microenvironment on hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) slides and compared to other clinicopathological findings. This article precisely investigated the relationship between the number of intratumoral and peritumoral buds with patients' 5-year survival rate. Also, the relationship between age, tumor stage, grade, size, the number of lymph nodes involved, and the presence of metastasis with the number of intratumoral and peritumoral buds was studied.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: The result showed a significant statistical association between the number of intratumoral and peritumoral buds with tumor size, tumor stage, presence of metastasis, the number of lymph nodes involved, and 5-year survival rate. On the other hand, there is not a significant statistical association between the number of intratumoral and peritumoral buds with age and tumor grade.

CONCLUSION: Our investigation revealed a significant statistical relationship between the number of tumor buds and patients' survival rate. So, this factor should be considered significant to help those patients increase their survival ratio.