Development of predictive nomogram for assessing pathological complete response after neo-adjuvant chemotherapy in treatment naive non-metastatic breast cancer patients - An ambispective study

Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women and leading cause of cancer related deaths amongst them. There is a difference in the clinical and demographic presentation of breast cancer patients in India compared to the West. Asians are younger to Western women with breast cancer at time of diagnosis. Prevalence of Triple negative breast cancer is more in Indian than Western women. Hence, the predictors of desired response to chemotherapy are also expected to differ. No study has been carried out in the Indian subcontinent to identify the predictors of complete response to chemotherapy in breast cancer patients. There is a striking difference in the clinical and demographic profile of breast cancer patients from India and the west. There is no published study in English literature from Indian sub continent on this subject. The few available studies from the west have used differing parameters as marker for response assessment making a head on comparison difficult. Hence, we wish to study the factors influencing response to Neoadjuvant chemotherapy and develop a predictive nomogram for the same. This may help in individualized patient treatment planning in the future.