The evaluation of the relationship between the presence of retraction artifact and lymphovascular invasion, lymph node metastasis, other prognostic parameters in breast carcinoma

Invasive breast cancers are the most common cause of death among women in our country as well as in all the world. The cause of death from breast cancer is usually metastasis. Determination of the metastatic potential of the tumor is the most important factor that guides treatment. The assessment of the lymphatic spread in the tumor is useful particularly in predicting the risk of metastasis. Since retraction artifact can be seen in the early stage of lymphatic spread, this phenomenon may have a prognostic value and predict the likelihood of metastasis. We investigated the relationship between retraction artifact and other clinicopathologic parameters (especially lymphovascular invasion and nodal metastasis) in a total of 191 cases diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma based on the materials obtained by modified radical mastectomy in Department of Pathology, Faculty of Medicine, Karadeniz Technical University between 2010 and 2015. All cases were retrospectively evaluated in terms of age, gender, tumor location, tumor diameter, multicentricity, histological grading, nuclear grading, presence of an in situ component, lymphovascular invasion, hormone receptor status, distant metastasis, pathological tumor stage, and lymph node metastasis. Moreover, we classified retraction artifact in the tumor blocks prepared from all cases by 4 points. We considered that 2 and above were significant. In our study, there was a positive correlation between the presence of retraction artifact and histologic grade, presence of an in situ component, pathological tumor stage, lymphovascular invasion and lymph node metastasis. Our study may be a clue to a better understanding of the mechanisms of lymphangiogenesis in breast cancer. However, our findings should be supported by immunohistochemical and molecular studies.