Extensive Intraductal Component in Breast Cancer: What Role in Disease-Free Survival?

Introduction: Extensive intraductal component (EIC) associated to early breast cancer could increase the risk locoregional recurrence, but its impact on distant metastases is still un-clear. The aim of the present study was to assess the role of EIC on 5-year survival out-comes in patients affected by early breast cancer treated with breast-conserving surgery.Methods: A total of 414 consecutive patients with a minimum follow-up of 60 mo were collected from January 2007 to December 2015. Disease-free survival (DFS), distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS), and locoregional recurrence-free survival at 5 y were assessed considering the presence or absence of EIC and other clinical and pathological features.Results: Absence of EIC was independently associated with worse 5-year DFS (hazard ratio [HR] 1.68, P = 0.008) and 5-year DMFS (HR 1.93, P = 0.007), whereas 5-year locoregional recurrence-free survival was not affected (HR 1.50, P = 0.16). Five-year DFS was increased by EIC in T1 patients (P = 0.03) but not in T2 stage. Moreover, EIC was associated to better DFS in G2 (P = 0.03) and G3 patients (P = 0.01) but not in G1 cases.Conclusions: Our results suggest that EIC is independently correlated with increased 5-year DFS and in particular with 5-year DMFS.(c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).