Prognostic significance of exclusive skeletal metastases in stage IV primary carcinoma of the breast.

The clinical presentation and survival rate for 30 patients with Stage IV carcinoma of the breast in whom the M1 disease was limited exclusively to the bones were compared with those of 30 women with stage, age and menopausally matched carcinoma of the breast with M1 disease limited exclusively to nonosseous tissue. The clinical findings at presentation and the histologic grades of the cancers (70.0 per cent grade II for osseous versus only 36.7 per cent for nonosseous), relative to the mean duration of tumor presence, identify the cancer with exclusive skeletal metastases as less aggressive. Also, the median survival time of the patients with bone-only metastases was 12 months as compared with six months for the nonosseous metastatic group. It is concluded that exclusive skeletal metastases identify more slowly growing carcinoma of the breast and is, therefore, prognostically significant.