Effect of surgical treatment on patients with stage T3 or T4 triple-negative breast cancer: a SEER-based retrospective observational study

Background: The use of surgery is controversial in patients with stage T3 or T4 triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). We aimed to explore the effect of surgical treatment on overall survival (OS) of these patients.

Methods: A total of 2,041 patients were selected and divided into the surgical and non-surgical groups based on the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database from 2010 to 2018. Propensity score matching (PSM) and inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) were applied to balance covariates between different groups. The OS of the two groups were assessed by Kaplan–Meier survival curves and Cox proportional hazards regression models.

Results: A total of 2,041 patients were included in the study. After PSM and IPTW, baseline characteristics of the matched variables were fully balanced. Kaplan–Meier survival curves showed that the median survival time and OS of TNBC patients with stage T3 or T4 in the surgical group were significantly improved compared with those in the non-surgical group. Multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression analysis showed that surgery was a protective factor for prognosis.

Conclusion: Our study found that surgery prolonged the median survival and improved OS compared with the non-surgical group of TNBC patients with stage T3 or T4.