Validation of the 8th edition of the American Joint Committee on Cancer Pathological Prognostic Staging for young breast cancer patients

Purpose: This study aimed to validate the newly proposed American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) pathological prognostic staging system for young breast cancer patients (aged <= 40 years). Results: We included 12811 women in this study. Overall, 52.8% of patients in the 7th AJCC stages were restaged to the 8th AJCC pathological staging system, including 10.7% upstaged and 42.1% downstaged. The receiver operating characteristics analysis showed that the new staging system had a better role in predicting breast cancer-specific survival (BCSS) compared with 7th edition staging (P<0.001). The results of the multivariate prognostic analysis showed that the hazard ratio of BCSS increased with the 8th AJCC stages, while the 7th anatomic stages had no significant difference in BCSS. Conclusions: The novel pathological staging system could provide more accurate prognostic stratification for young women with breast cancer because of the high proportion of stage migration. Patients and Methods: Data for young breast cancer patients diagnosed between 2010 and 2014 were included from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results program. Chi-squared test, Kaplan-Meier method, receiver operating characteristics curve, and Cox proportional hazard analysis were applied to statistical analysis.