Prognosis of subtypes of the mucinous breast carcinoma in Chinese women: a population-based study of 32-year experience (1983-2014)

Purpose: The heterogeneous nature of the mucinous breast cancer (MBC), with its pure (PMBC) and mixed subtypes (MMBC), calls for precise prognosis assessment. Methods: We analyzed 197 consecutive MBC patients, including 117 PMBC and 80 MMBC, who were treated from 1983 to 2014. The clinicopathological features, treatment choice, disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) were compared among PMBC, MMBC and MMBC subgroups. Prognostic factors of PMBC and MMBC were identified. Results: Compared to PMBC, MMBC had more lymph node metastasis (p = 0.043), Her2 positivity (p = 0.036), high Ki-67 index (defined as> 20%, p = 0.026) and anti-Her2 targeted therapy (p = 0.016). The 5-year DFS of PMBC and MMBC were 90.4% and 86.2%, whereas the 5-year OS were 99.0% and 98.7%. No significant difference was found in DFS or OS among all MBC subtypes. High Ki-67 (p = 0.020) appeared as DFS factor in PMBC, while anti-Her2 targeted therapy (p = 0.047) as the DFS predictors in MMBC. Conclusion: MMBC manifested similar 5-year survival to PMBC in Chinese woman, suggesting that intra-tumoral heterogeneity might not interfere with MBC short-term prognosis.