br The obtained results allowed to evaluate the relationship be

The obtained results allowed to evaluate the relationship be-tween lymph node metastasis and steroid receptors expression in MpBC. We found a correlation between ER expression and lymph node metastasis (p < 0.001) and between PR expression and lymph node metastasis (p < 0.001). No statistically significant differences between steroid receptors expression and tumor histological grade (G1-G3) (ER, p ¼ 0.096; PR, p ¼ 0.096) and between steroid re-ceptors expression and tumor size (T1a-T4) (ER, p ¼ 0.059; PR, p ¼ 0.059) in MpBC were found. The analysis of the HER2 expres-sion allowed us to find correlation between its expression and tu-mor histological grade (G1-G3) (p < 0.001), between HER2 expression and tumor size (T1a-T4) (p < 0.001) and between HER2 expression and lymph node metastasis (pN0-pN4) (p < 0.001) (Table VII) in MpBC (Table VII).
5. Discussion
Our study was carried out in a group of 13 patients with MpBC isolated from 1122 patients with invasive breast cancer. In our study, a detailed analysis of basic histopathological features of MpBC, such as the histological grade, primary tumor size, lymph node status and the basic immunohistochemical breast cancer profile (ER, PR, HER2) were carried out.
The percentage of invasive breast cancers negative or positive for the presence of ER, PR and HER2 depending on the histological type.
HER2
Expression of steroid receptors
Expression of steroid receptors
Expression of HER2
negative positive p-value
negative positive p-value
negative positive p-value
Statistically significant results p < 0.05.
Table 7
Relationship between the expression of SC 236 (ER), progesterone (PR), HER2 receptors and histological degree of tumor malignancy (G1-G3), tumor size (T1a-T4) and regional lymph-node status (pN0-pN3) in metaplastic breast cancer.
ER
PR
HER2
Expression of steroid receptors
Expression of steroid receptors
Expression of HER2
negative positive p-value
negative positive p-value
negative positive p-value
Tumor grade
Tumor size (T-stage)
Lymph nodes (N-stage)
Statistically significant results p < 0.05.
MpBC is a rare subtype of invasive breast cancer that accounts for between 0.02% and 5% of invasive breast cancer. In our study, the incidence rate of MpBC was 1.16%. What is interesting, we found that increasing number of patients with MpBC were reported each year (years 2009e2011). The increased incidence we noted may represent an actual increase in disease or may be a result of improved awareness and recognition by pathologists [7,9e11]. Clinically, the usual presentation of patients with MpBC was with palpable breast mass in women more than 50 years of age [12,13], which trend was also noticed in our study.
In our study the age of the patients ranged from 35 to 79 years, with a mean age of 58.54 years. As it was found in other studies, MpBC is more commonly seen in postmenopausal women, and the mean age at diagnosis was reported around 54.5 years [14e16], however some studies reported significantly younger age at MpBC diagnosis [17,18]. The data showed, that the mean age of patients with MpBC is lower than the mean age of patients with other invasive breast cancer types (60.04) which tendency is also confirmed by other studies.
Most of previous studies showed that the tumor was large at the time of MpBC diagnosis. The median MpBC tumor size in our study was 2.78 cm (range, 1.2e5.2 cm), larger then median size of other invasive breast cancers (1.91 cm). Pezzi et al. (2007) reported that the larger size of MpBC at clinical presentation appeared to result from a more rapid growth [9]. In our study only 3 MpBCs (24%) were found to be < 2 cm in size. In the population based study by Pezzi et al. (2007) 29.5% of MpBCs were found to be < 2 cm in size compared with 65.2% of invasive ductal breast carcinomas [9]. A connection between tumor size, recurrence and survival rate in MpBC has been suggested [19], although there are studies that indicate that there is no such a relationship [15,20].