Abstract:
Objective To assess the role of detecting circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in predicting the prognosis of breast cancer patients.
Methods Clinical trials that assessed the prognostic relevance of tumor cell detection in the peripheral blood of breast cancer patients were retrieved from MEDLINE, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang Data, and VIP information database. The generic inverse variance in Review Manager 5.1.4 was used for meta-analysis and the main parameters included progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS).
Results A total of 33 studies including 5, 393 patients were eligible for final analyses. Meta-analyses associated the presence of CTCs with both poor PFS HR = 2.09 (95% CI: 1.72 to 2.55), n = 23, I2 = 57% and OS HR = 2.49 (95% CI: 2.18 to 2.85), n = 24, I2 = 0%. The subgroup analysis by the International Union Against Cancer Staging showed that CTCs was a statistically significant prognostic factor of stages I to III and stage IV breast cancer patients (P < 0.00001).
Conclusion The presence of CTCs indicates early recurrence and death in patients with breast cancer, and the detection of CTCs can be used to predict prognosis of breast cancer patients.