Abstract
To evaluate the clinical outcomes and relationship between tumor size, lymph node status, and prognosis in a large cohort of patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC).849 Patients were categorized by tumor size and nodal status. The Kaplan-Meier method and Cox proportional hazards models were used to determine the association of nodal status and tumor size with survival outcomes. A Sidak adjustment was used for pairwise group comparisons. We conducted six pairwise comparisons between different node status. In univariate and multivariate analyses, it was indicated that N0 patients had similar prognoses as N1 patients (P = 0.072), and the OS of both of these groups was significantly better than that of N2/N3 patients (N0 vs N2, P < 0.001; N0 vs N3, P < 0.001; N1 vs N2, P = 0.014; N1 vs N3, P = 0.005). In summary, we report that in Chinese patients with triple-negative breast cancer, a greater difference in survival was observed between N1 and N2 than between N0 and N1, warranting the possible need of more intensive chemotherapy for N2-3 patients. We also found that tumor size made an impact on survival when lymph nodes were extensively involved, a finding that needs longer follow-up and further validation.