Abstract

Prognostic factors are parameters measured at diagnosis enabling to forecast an affected patient’s survival. Several new prognostic factors have been suggested in the literature during the last years for breast cancer. Adequate therapeutic protocols can of course be planned according to TNM staging scale, patient’s age, menopausal status, and more recently, on hormonal receptors quantification. Inclusion of new predictive factors in the oncological practice has allowed a better choice of specific adjuvant therapies according to the patient’s profile. However, comparisons between different studies are usually complex, since results are obtained from different populations, thus posing some difficulties to their comparison. Following a comprehensive international literature review, we analyzed the recent contributions on the prognostic factors related to breast cancer survival, such as tumor size, lymph nodes invasion, familial antecedents of breast cancer, tumour hysthological grade, socio-economical level, age, angiogenesis degree, bone marrow micromethastasis and molecular biomarkers such as cathepsin D, p53, hormonal receptors and c-erbB2 oncoprotein. The authors also tried to highlight their perspective use on the current clinical practice in Brazil.

Key words: breast neoplasms; disease-free survival; diagnostic; hormonal receptors; prognostic; neoplasm staging; c-erbB-2.