Objective  The current study aims to investigate the expression of the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) in triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and its relationship with the prognosis.

  Methods  The medical records of 560 breast cancer patients who underwent surgery in Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital between November 2007 and June 2008 were reviewed. Immunohistochemistry was used to determine the VEGF expression in TNBC patients and to analyze the relationship be- tween VEGF expression with clinicopathologic characteristics and the prognostic value.

  Results  The VEGF positive rate was 36.1% in all of the breast cancer cases (202 / 560). Moreover, the VEGF expression was significantly higher in TNBC cases than in non-TN- BC cases (45 % versus 33.9 %, P = 0.031). No significant correlation was observed between the different VEGF expression levels and patients' age, tumor location, histology, tumor size, lymph node, pathological stage, histology grade, or p53 (P > 0.05). The VEGF pos- itive rate was higher in younger (66.7 % versus 41.7 %), lymph node-positive (51.1 % versus 37.1%), and p53-positive (51.8 % ver- sus 34.0 %) patients. However, the differences were insignificant. Moreover, TNBC patients with positive VEGF expression were more prone to relapse and metastasis (23.9 % versus 9.7 %). The 3-year disease-free relapse (DFR) rate was lower in VEGF-positive pa- tients than in VEGF-negative patients (76.6 % versus 90.3 %, P = 0.044).

  Conclusion  VEGF is one of the predictive factors for the DFR rate of TNBC patients, which could be an important research topic for future studies.