Detection and prognostic significance of circulating tumour cells in patients with metastatic breast cancer

Abstract

Several studies in the past have shown that circulating tumour cells (CTC) are an independent prognostic factor in metastatic breast cancer. Therefore, one has first explored the potential differences in CTC detection rates according to classical clinicopathological patient characteristics using a negative binomial model. Several variables such as age, stage, molecular subtypes, number of affected organs, ... are found significant during the analyses. Furthermore, most of those previous studies dichotomize CTC on a cut off value of 5 CTCs in 7.5 mL blood. In this project, one has tried to predict the overall and progression free survival of patients with metastatic breast cancer using CTC as a continuous variable. A Cox proportional hazards model is used to analyse the relationship of certain variables according to overall and progression free survival. CTC was a significant variable in every model considered during the analyses.