Fewer Reoperations After Lumpectomy for Breast Cancer with Neoadjuvant Rather than Adjuvant Chemotherapy: A Report from the National Cancer Database.

BACKGROUND: Reoperations occur frequently after initial lumpectomy for breast cancer. The authors hypothesized that the receipt of neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) is associated with fewer reoperations.

METHODS: The association between timing of chemotherapy and reoperation rates (ROR) after lumpectomy was investigated for patients with stages 1-3 breast cancer in the National Cancer Database (NCDB) from 2010 to 2013 by multivariable logistic regression modeling. Then propensity score-matching was performed.

RESULTS: The unadjusted ROR for 71,627 stages 1-3 patients was 11.4% for those who had NAC compared with 20.3% for those who had postoperative chemotherapy (p < 0.001) (odds ratio [OR] 0.53; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.49-0.57; p < 0.001). The ORs for the reoperations performed for patients with stages 1, 2, and 3 cancers who received NAC were respectively 0.65 (95% CI 0.56-0.75), 0.50 (95% CI 0.45-0.56), and 0.27 (95% CI 0.19-0.38) The p values for all were lower than 0.001.

CONCLUSION: For a population of patients receiving chemotherapy, the receipt of chemotherapy before instead of after surgery was associated with fewer reoperations after initial lumpectomy for breast cancer.