short-term prognostic index for breast cancer npi or lpi短期预后指数乳腺癌npi或lpi.pdfVIP

SAGE-Hindawi Access to Research Pathology Research International Volume 2011, Article ID 918408, 7 pages doi:10.4061/2011/918408 Research Article Short-Term Prognostic Index for Breast Cancer: NPI or Lpi V. Van Belle,1 J. Decock,2 W. Hendrickx,3 O. Brouckaert,4 S. Pintens,4 P. Moerman,5 H. Wildiers,4, 6 R. Paridaens,4, 6 M. R. Christiaens,4 S. Van Huffel,1 and P. Neven4, 7 1 Division SCD, Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT), K.U.Leuven, Kasteelpark Arenberg 10/2446, 3000 Leuven, Belgium 2 School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia (UEA), NR4 7TJ Norwich, UK 3 School of Medicine, Health Policy and Practice, University of East Anglia, NR4 7TJ Norwich, UK 4 Multidisciplinary Breast Centre (MBC), University Hospitals Leuven, Leuven, Belgium 5 Department of Pathology, University Hospitals Leuven, Leuven, Belgium 6 Department of General Medical Oncology, University Hospitals Leuven, Leuven, Belgium 7 Department of Gynaecological Oncology, University Hospitals Leuven, Leuven, Belgium Correspondence should be addressed to V. Van Belle, vanya.vanbelle@esat.kuleuven.be Received 27 August 2010; Accepted 2 December 2010 Academic Editor: Rohit Bhargava Copyright © 2011 V. Van Belle et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Axillary lymph node involvement is an important prognostic factor for breast cancer survival but is confounded by the number of nodes examined. We compare the performance of the log odds prognostic index (Lpi), using a ratio of the positive versus negative lymph nodes, with the Nottingham Prognostic Index (NPI) for short-term breast