The impact of lymph node metastases on the survival of breast cancer patients with ten or more positive lymph nodes.

To investigate the impact of the number of involved lymph nodes on survival, we retrospectively reviewed the data for 37 patients with breast cancer and metastases of ten or more lymph nodes who underwent treatment between 1987 and 1995. Based on the number of positive lymph nodes, the patients were allocated to one of three groups. The 5-year disease-free and overall survival rates for all patients were both 53.0%. The 7 patients with 26 or more positive nodes had significantly poorer survival than either the 19 patients with 10-15 nodes, or the 11 with 16-25 nodes, although there were no differences in survival related to the extent of node involvement as defined using the Japanese staging system. Patients with 50%-75% frequency of metastasis, defined as the positive nodes/total resected nodes, had significantly better survival than those with < 50% or > 75% frequency. These results indicate that the number of involved lymph nodes is related to survival and that 25 positive nodes is a cutoff point in breast cancer patients with ten or more positive lymph nodes.