Abstract / Summary
Abstract Objective; To assess histopathological response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer patients undergoing mastectomy at a tertiary care hospital. Material and Methods; Histopathological features were assessed for a total of 39 breast carcinoma cases post-therapy. Statistical analysis was done using IBM SPSS statistics 17 (Chicago, USA). Presence of viable tumor cells was checked. Results; The results of the present study revealed that only 6 out of 39 breast carcinoma cases showed complete response to chemotherapy (ie absence of cancer cells completely). Intracellular changes commonly noted after chemotherapy included nuclear enlargement, hyperchromasia and an increased N:C ratio which were found in upto 85% of the cases followed by presence of prominent nucleoli and karyorrhexis/karyolysis. The predominant stromal changes seen post-therapy included necrosis (74.4%), fibrosis (64.1%), desmoplasia (59%) and degenerative changes (33.3%). Conclusion; Our study concludes that majority of breast cancer patients showed no or minimal response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Only 15% patients showed complete response to chemotherapy in our population group while in western world, this percentage is around 50-60%. This shows different population groups respond differently to chemotherapy in breast cancer and management options should be revisited in each different population group.