Clinicopathological Analysis of Patients with Breast Cancer and Their Families

Breast cancer is one of the most common malignancies among Iranian women; however, its clinicopathological feature is uncertain. We pioneered a genetic counseling program among patients with breast cancer and their families in Isfahan. This is the first report of this program.
This was a descriptive cross-sectional study on women with breast cancer registered in Ala Cancer Control and Prevention Center (ACCPC)during 2014. The women and/or their first/second relatives were enrolled for genetic counseling, then their demographic and clinicopathological data were analyzed using SPSSsoftware.
The records of 258 patients with breast cancer and their families were studied. The mean age of the patients at diagnosis was 44.2 years (range: 25-71 years). Of these, 88 (34.1%) patients had ≤40 years at diagnosis. Only 2 (0.8%) patients were men. Also, 21 (8.1%) out of the 258 patients had died at the time of genetic counseling. Distant metastasis was found in 40 (15.5%) patients at diagnosis. The most common pathological feature of breast tumor was invasive ductal carcinoma (68.2%) and the rarest were sarcoma (0.4%) and papillary carcinoma (0.4%). Triple-negative molecular phenotype breast cancer was reported in 25 (9.7%) patients. Estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) were negative in 32.2%, 27.1%, and 44.2% of the patients’ tumors, respectively. P53 had been checked in 41.5% of the patients of which about 70.1% were mutant. Overall, 895 cases of cancer were reported among the patients and their families (3.5 patients per family: range=1-9) of which breast, gastric, and colorectal cancers with an incidence of 43.9%, 8.3% and 5.5%, were the most common malignancies, respectively.
Early-onset breast cancer and positive family history for cancer were seen in a significant proportion of the patients in our center, indicating the importance of genetic counseling among the patients and their families.