Multifocal-multicentric breast cancers: are they of worse prognosis?

The malignant mammary pathology can be presented like unifocal or multifocal-multicentric tumors (MFMC). The influence of this factor as prognostic is controversial. Objective: Establish if the presence of MFMC breast cancer, in comparison to the unifocal breast cancer, is associated to worse prognosis. Patients and Method: Combined prospective-retrospective cohort, corresponding to the totality of patients treated by surgery of breast cancer at Hospital FACH between 1972 and 2007 that fulfilled the inclusion criteria, obtaining a total of 589 patients. The statistic analysis was done with Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests and T-student for quantitative variables, chi square for qualitative variables and Kaplan-Meier Curves with log rank test for survival. Results: The 93.4% of the patients had unifocal breast cancer, while the rest (6.6%) had MFMC cancer There were no significant statistical differences between ages of both groups (57.88 and 54.92 years for unifocal and MFMC, respectively). MFMC cancer group presented more bilateral cancer than unifocal cancer group (7.7% versus 1.6%; p = 0.04); also, the lymph node affectation was greater in MFMC group (4.06 versus 1.83 lymph nodes; p = 0.001). There were no statistical significant differences in 3 years survival when comparing unifocal and MFMC tumors (81.8% and 90.4%, respectively; = 0.223). There were no differences on 5 years free metastasis survival between both groups (Unifocals 86.2%; MFMC 75%; p = 0.651). Discussion: MFMC breast cancer was associated to bad prognostic factors, nevertheless, there was not significant differences in 5 years metastasis free survival and global survival between both groups, reason why multifocality-multicentricity would not confer worse prognosis to the disease.