The prognostic value of LYMPh node ratio in localy advanced breast cancer

Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed malignancy, accounting for over a million cases each year. It is also the leading cause of cancer death in women World wide. Most important prognostic factor in breast cancer is axillary lymmph nodes status that the number of involved nodes has been incorporated into routine clinical decision making. Committee on Cancer (AJCC) staging system, patients with different positive ALNS have been classified as various pN disease ( pN0: zero positive node, pN1: 1–3 positive nodes, pN2: 4-9 positive nodes and pN3: ≥ 10. Recently, however, a few studies have suggested that, not only the number of postive nodes but also the total number of lymph nodes removed should be taken into consideration. Therefore, a new prognostic factor of lymph node ratio (LNR), which was defined as the ratio of the number of positive to total removed lymph nodes. The purpose of our study was to investigate whether the lymph node ratio (LNR) is a better prognostic factor in predicting disease-free survival (DFS) for breast cancer patients as compared with pN staging. The analysis was based on 348 breast cancer patients who had underwent axillary lymph node dissection between 2006 and 2016 in 9 Eylul University Departmant of General Surgery. Breast cancer, lenf nod ratio, prognostic factors, dissease free survival