Long-term prognosis of scar and non-scar cancers of the breast.

The prognostic significance of histopathologic classification of ductal breast carcinoma as scar and non-scar types was studied among 311 patients with breast cancer, followed up for a minimum of 22 years after the diagnosis or until death. Ninety-six (31%) cancers were of scar type and they had a more favourable prognosis than the cancers of non-scar type (p = 0.0001). The scar cancers were more often well differentiated (p less than 0.0001), had more pronounced inflammatory cell reaction (p less than 0.0001), less nuclear pleomorphism (p less than 0.0001), less tumor necrosis (p less than 0.0001), and a lower mitotic rate (p less than 0.0001) than the non-scar cancers. It was less common for patients with scar cancer to have axillary lymph node metastases (p = 0.01) and their primary tumor was smaller (p = 0.006). In flow cytometric analysis the scar cancers were more often DNA diploid (p = 0.004) with S-phase fraction below the median (p = 0.0002). In a multivariate analysis the association of cancer with a scar did not appear as an independent prognostic factor, whereas histologic grade (p less than 0.001) and extent of tumor necrosis (p less than 0.001) did. We conclude that the classification of breast cancer as scar and non-scar types has less prognostic value than the conventional histopathologic grading.