Breastanbul the conference 2022, İstanbul, Türkiye, 13 - 15 Ekim 2022, ss.83-84
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MAMOGRAPHIC DENSITY AND PATHOLOGICAL RESPONSE IN PATIENTS WITH LOCAL ADVANCED BREAST CANCER RECEIVING NEOADJUVAN CHEMOTHERAPY
Objective: In our study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between mammographic density category and pathological complete
response (pCR) in patients with locally advanced breast cancer (BC) who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy.
Materials-Methods: The population of the study consisted of 98 (n=98) BC patients who applied to Dokuz Eylül University Hospital Medical
Oncology outpatient clinic for diagnosis and treatment between 2018-2021. Mammographic density at diagnosis is categorized according
to BI-RADS 5th Edition. Independent sample t-test was used to compare independent groups, and Chi-square test was used to analyze
categorical variables. The results were evaluated at the 95% confidence interval and the significance level was p<0.05.
Results: The mean age of the patients was 53+-13.3. Most of the patients were in the intermediate mamographic density (MD) breast
class. A total of 77.5% of the patients were BI-RADS b or c; only 10.2% were categorized as a and 12.2% as d. Patients with less dense breast
composition (MD category a+b) were significantly older than patients with more dense breasts (MD category c, d) (p = 0.001). When patients
were divided according to the BI-RADS classification (a/b vs. c/d), there was no statistical difference in performing pCR between patients with
high MD and patients with low MD (p=0.684 (95% CI 0.67-0.69)
Conclusions: Considering the individual response to NACT, there is a need for markers that predict which patients will respond well to the
treatment applied. In previous studies, conflicting results were obtained in the relationship between mammographic density value and
treatment response. In our study, MD is not an independent predictive marker of response to breast cancer NACT. Larger studies are needed to
perform subgroup analyses based on surrogate subtype to make MD useful as a predictive biomarker in the neoadjuvant clinical setting.
Keywords: density, pathological complete response, breast cancer