Purpose: to offer new data for the conflicting reports which present different prognosis for patients with breast carcinoma, according to the timing of surgery in relation to the menstrual cycle. Patients and Methods: in a retrospective study on 451 premenopausal women with breast cancer, aged between 26 and 52 years, 130 cases were selected and followed for 60 months, at least. Sixty-eight were operated during the follicular phase and 62 in the luteal period, whose findings regarding clinical stages, axillary involvement and estrogen and progesterone hormonal receptor concentrations of the neoplasms were also analyzed. Results: the follow-up of 130 patients showed that 64.4% had a disease-free survival after five years and 43% exceeded 10 years. Subdividing the cases into 2 subgroups, according to the timing of surgery, the survival rates were different, 58.8% at 5 and 36.7% at 10 years, when the operation occurred in the follicular phase, and 70.9% and 50%, at 5 and 10 years, respectively, during the luteal period. Conclusions: in this study, the patients operated in the luteal phase reached higher survival rates than the women operated during the follicular period. However, these values were lower than those displayed by the classic prognostic factors of axillary involvement and tumor size.
Breast cancer; Menstrual cycle; Estrogen receptor
