Clinical usefulness of measuring the number of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTC) in breast cancer patients Original article
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Abstract
Background: Monitoring the breast cancer patients after an adjuvant therapy usually involves imaging methods or biopsy. Alternatively, breast cancer markers can be determined – one of them is the number of circulating tumor cells (CTC).
Aim: The aim of this study was to compare the efficacy of standard monitoring methods and those based on CTC count.
Materials and methods: Systematic review of PubMed database was performed. Inclusion criteria were met by 16 clinical trials, 9 reviews and 5 treatment recommendations.
Results: CTC assay sensitivity was between 39% and 55% compared to the imaging, and 64% in combination with CA 27.29 (cancer antigen 27.29) marker. CTC specificity for the detection level of < 5 or ≥ 5 CTCs in blood was almost 100%. CTC assay enables correct classification of patients according to the neoplastic disease progression. Overall survival (OS) and progression free survival (PFS) were correlated with blood CTCs in metastatic patients. The study results suggest a link between CTC level and imaging diagnosis. Patients with CTC ≥ 5 were at a higher risk of disease progression, as diagnosed by radiographic methods, than patients with CTC < 5.
Conclusions: Blood CTC measurement is a good clinical predictor of overall survival and progression-free survival and can be used for treatment efficacy monitoring in patients at high risk of recurrence or progression during advanced breast cancer treatment.
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Copyright: © Medical Education sp. z o.o. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license.
Address reprint requests to: Medical Education, Marcin Kuźma (marcin.kuzma@mededu.pl)
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