Abstract
Uncertainty exists around the need to include an anthracycline if taxane-based adjuvant chemotherapy is being used for human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER2) negative and axillary lymph node negative (LNN) breast cancer. We identified all patients who were diagnosed with HER2-negative, LNN breast cancer treated with docetaxel-cyclophosphamide for four cycles (DC4) or an anthracycline-taxane (AT) regimen following surgical resection in Alberta from 2008 through 2012. We used propensity score methods to match each patient treated with AT to up to four patients treated with DC4 on potentially confounding clinicopathologic and treatment variables. We compared the 10-year invasive disease free survival (iDFS), breast cancer specific-survival (BCSS) and overall survival (OS) and assessed the effect of the type of adjuvant chemotherapy on these outcomes using Cox regression. Of the 726 eligible patients, 657 (90.5%) were treated with DC4 and 69 (9.5%) were treated with AT. Matching created a group of 202 women treated with DC4 and eliminated differences in clinicopathologic and treatment factors. There was no statistically significant difference for the treatment effects of matched DC4 patients compared to the AT patients on iDFS (75.7% vs. 76.8%, p = 0.75; hazard ratio (HR) = 1.05, 95% CI = 0.65 to 1.8), BCSS (88.1% vs. 87%, p = 0.8; HR = 0.91, 95% CI = 0.42 to 1.9), or OS (87.1% vs. 86.9%, p= 0.96; HR = 0.98, 95% CI = 0.46 to 2.1). Four cycles of DC as compared with an AT regimen yielded similar 10-year iDFS, BCSS and OS amongst patients with HER2-negative, LNN breast cancer.