Evaluation of Clinical and Pathological Response to Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy in Patients with Locally Advanced Breast Cancer and Correlation with Biological Factors and Type of Chemotherapy

Background and Objectives: Breast cancer is the second leading cause of death from cancer in women after lung cancer, and is the most common cancer in women after non-melanoma skin cancer. Given the importance of the issue, therefore the aim of this study was to evaluate the response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in patients with locally advance breast cancer (LABC). Material and Methods: This study was performed as a cross-sectional descriptive-analytic survey in Gazi hospital in Tabriz. In this survey, 77 patients with LABC were enrolled and data were collected from patients’ health records. All the patients were treated based on Anthracycline regimen and among them, 38 cases (49.4%) received Docetaxel and 39 cases (50.6%) were treated without Docetaxel. These descriptive data of patients were analyzed with Ordinal Logistic Regression and the therapeutic response of Docetaxel was evaluated in these patients. Results: Among patients in this study, 21 cases (27.3%) showed non therapeutic response, 43 cases (55.8%) had partial response, and in 13 cases (16.9%) complete response to treatment were achieved, in which three cases (23%) without Docetaxel regimen and 10 cases (77%) with Docetaxel regimen had complete response to treatment. Also, 14 cases (18.2%) of patients were HER-2 positive. Complete response to treatment was not observed in HER-2 positive patients and partial response was observed in 10 cases (71.4%). Conclusion: In this study, the response to treatment was significantly higher in patients who received Docetaxol than in non-Docetaxel group (P=0.004). As well as there was a significant relation between response to treatment and positive or negative HER-2 receptor patients.