OBJECTIVESTo explore the clinical and pathological characteristics of stage IV breast cancer and to analyze their relationship with the morbidity and prognosis.

METHODSThe records of 66 patients presenting from January 2008 to December 2014 with stage IV breast cancer were reviewed. All of the patients were women and the median age was 57.5 (31 to 80) years, accounted for 3.01% (66/2 189) among the breast cancer patients treated in the same period. Statistical methods were used to analyze the correlation between clinical and pathological characteristics such as T-stage, N-stage, immuno-histo-chemistry and the morbidity and prognosis of stage IV breast cancer. The influence of patients characteristics to metastasis were compared by χ(2) test. Kaplan-Meier curves were reported for overall survival (OS), and the Log-rank test was used to compare the difference in groups. Cox proportional models were fitted for multivariate analysis.

RESULTSThe median survival time of stage IV breast cancer was 56.0 months and the 5-year survival rate was 40%. To metastasis, the effects of age, subtypes, histological grade, hormone receptor (HR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)had no significant statistics differences. It was concluded that the expression of HER2 (P=0.003) and HR (P=0.001) as well as single metastasis (P=0.029) were the influencing factors of the survival by multivariate Cox regression analysis. Primary tumor R0 surgery group and no surgery group had no significant statistics differences of overall survival and the 5-year survival rate (P=0.102).

CONCLUSIONSClinical and pathological characteristics have no effect on metastasis. The expression of HER2 and HR as well as single metastasis play important roles in survival.