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Introduction. Bilateral breast cancer (BBC) consists of 2-12% all cases of breast carcinoma. In relation to time between the first and second cancer diagnosis, the synchronous (s-BBC) or metachronous (m-BBC) bilateral breast cancer is defined. Material and methods. The clinicopathologic characteristics of 303 patients treated between 1963 and 2014 for bilateral breast cancer was presented. Synchronous BBC was diagnosed in 70 patients (23.1%) and remaining 233 patients (76.9%) developed metachronous BBC. Patients with m-BBC in comparison to s-BBC were younger (mean age: 51.4 vs 60.6 years), the positive family cancer history was rare (36.7% vs 48.5%), and more frequently these patients were before menopause (65.7% vs 44.3%). While the lobular type of breast cancer which consisted of 6.6% cases in first breast and 8.9% cases of second carcinomas, more frequently was presented in s-BBC (8.6%) in comparison to m-BBC (6%). Results. The mean time of follow up was 174 months. The 5- and 10-year overall survival rates were 89.3% and 76.1%, respectively. The presence of s-BBC connected with worse prognosis; the 5- and 10-year overall survival were 93.1% and 82% for m-BBC and 76.4% and 52.1% for s-BBC (p = 0.00244, log-rank test). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. The standard treatment for patients with LD SCLC (limited stage small-cell lung cancer) is combined modality therapy that includes chemotherapy (ChT) with platinum-based regimens and thoracic radiotherapy (RT), followed by prophylactic cranial irradiation (PCI) in patients with a response in the thorax. Objectives. The evaluation of PCI in patients with LD SCLC and the analysis of the effects of certain therapeutic factors on the frequency and occurrence of brain metastases. Materials and methods. Between 2002 and 2015, a total of 271 patients with LD SCLC received chemo-radiotherapy (concurrently in 122 pts - 45% and sequential in 149 pts - 55%). PCI was administered in 167 pts (61.6%) with total dose of 30 Gy given to the whole brain; 86 pts (51.1%) received PCI after completed chemo-radiotherapy and in 81 pts (48.9%) PCI was administered immediately after the end of thoracic irradiation. The following statistical methods were used: Kaplan-Meier method (evaluation of survival rates: overall survival - OS, and brain metastases-free survival - BMFS), log-rank test (for comparison of survival rates), Cox' proportional hazard model (for multivariate analysis), Pearson chi2 test for independence (for categorized variables comparison) and variance analysis (for continuous variables comparison). All the calculations were performed using Statistica v. 13.3 software (TIBCO Software Inc.) and the significance level for all the statistical methods was p < 0.05. Results. Complete response in thorax was observed in 172 pts (63.5%) and remaining 99 pts (36.5%) developed partial response. During follow-up, 120 pts (44.3%) developed distant metastases from which brain metastases were most frequent (61 cases - 60.8%). The cumulative 5-year incidence of brain metastases amounted to 18.9% (when PCI was administered) and 45.9% (when PCI was omitted) and these differences were significant (p < 0.0001). PCI was an independent prognostic factor for BMFS and for OS. Omitted PCI is related with HR amounted: 6.25 for BMFS and 1.81 for OS. Conclusions. PCI significantly reduces the incidence of brain metastases and delays the development of brain metastases in patients treated for LD SCLC. PCI is a significant independent prognostic factor for brain metastases-free survival and overall survival. The development of brain metastases is the most common type of failure in patients with LD SCLC and 90% of such relapses occurred during the 24 months following the completion of chemo-radiotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. The continuously improving cancer detection at an early stage and improving survival rates have been observed and, therefore, patients are predisposed to detection of multiple primaries. It has been reported that the incidence of multiple primaries in breast cancer patients ranges from of 4% to 17%. Materials and methods. A group of 112 breast cancer patients with synchronous malignancies was presented. They constituted 0.09% of patients (118,952 cases) who were treated for breast cancer at the same time period, and made up 3.5% of all patients (3,176 cases) with multiple primary cancers, and 21.7% of all patients (517 cases) with breast cancer who developed multiple primaries. Results. The most frequent type of synchronous primary malignancy was breast cancer (63.4%) and 90.1% of them were diagnosed at the same time or within one month following the first breast cancer diagnosis. Among cases of non-breast synchronous primaries, female genital organ malignancies were predominant (36.6%). Synchronous breast cancer was diagnosed significantly earlier than non-breast cancers (mean time was 0.4 and 1 month, respectively, p = 0.0123). Better results in the group with synchronous contralateral breast cancer in comparison to synchronous breast and non-breast cancer were observed (5-year overall survival rates were 90.9% and 66.3%, respectively, and 5-year disease-free survival rate — 62.5% and 51.3%, respectively). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]