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In the period from September 1980 to December 1987, our laboratory measured estrogen (ER) and progesterone receptor (PgR) levels in 960 patients with primary breast cancer. At presentation, 918 of these had no distant metastases. ER as well as PgR were considered positive at values above 10 fmol/mg cytosol protein. All the patients included had been operated on at one of two participating hospitals in the country of North Jutland, and all patients had been checked up in a uniform way at one oncological out-patient department. By applying test for interaction, the PgR was found to be dependent on nodal status. Separate multivariate analyses were carried out for node positive and node negative patients. By this method, size of tumor, histologic grading, and age turned out to be independent prognostic factors for the node negative patients. Independent prognostic parameters for the node positive patients were histologic grading, PgR and postoperative x-ray therapy. The results support the theory that PgR is a better predictor of disease-free survival than ER.

Axillary nodal status was analysed in 960 consecutive cases of primary invasive breast cancer operated in two Danish hospitals. After stratification according to the number of nodes removed, the rate of node positivity in each subgroup was calculated. We found that the probability of finding at least one metastatic node increased continuously up to about 10 removed nodes. In lymph node negative patients, who did not receive any adjuvant treatment, there was a significant association between the recurrence-free survival and the number of nodes removed, provided that less than 8-10 nodes had been collected. The percentage of node positivity in each subgroup seemed to level off above 10 nodes at about 64%, suggesting that this represents the true rate of node positivity at the time of primary surgery. We conclude that about 10 axillary nodes should be removed in order to minimize the risk of erroneous classification of the axilla.