Breast cancer is the most common cancer among women.  It is important to distinguish subset of patients with aggressive disease at risk for early progression resulted in cancer death.  The present study attempts to evaluate quantitatively the initial bone scan appearance among breast cancer patients with bone metastasis, and to clarify the correlation with patient’s outcome.

Retrospective study in a single institute.

The subjects consisted of 29 breast cancer patients with bone metastasis which developed after surgery.  The cases recurred in other visceral sites at the same time of bone metastasis, were excluded from this series.  On the basis of the extent of disease (EOD), the patients were divided into low-EOD and high-EOD groups, and their outcome was analyzed retrospectively. Statistical differences were determined by the Student’s t test for continuous variables and the chi-square test for categorical variables.  Overall survival was evaluated by Logrank test.

There was no significant difference between the groups concerning with the clinicopathological background.  However, 5-year survival rate after recurrence among low-EOD group was 50.8%, which was significantly higher than high-EOD cases (20.9%, p=0.001). 

This is the first report described the association between quantitative grading of bone metastases and their survival after recurrence among breast cancer patients with bone metastasis.  The use EOD grade on initial bone scan is useful for the prognostic prediction, which required only a simple procedure without expensive or complicated equipment.