Circulating tumor cells in metastatic inflammatory breast cancer

Patients and methods: This retrospective study included 42 metastatic IBC and 107 metastatic non-IBC patients treated with first- or second-line chemotherapy from January 2004 to December 2007 at MD Anderson Cancer Center. CTCs were detected and enumerated before patients started chemotherapy using the CellSearch (TM) system. Results: Ten (23.8%) IBC patients versus 48 (44.9%) non-IBC patients had baseline CTCs >= 5 per 7.5 ml of peripheral blood. IBC patients had a lower mean +/- SEM CTCs than non-IBC patients (7.6 +/- 2.9 versus 34.2 +/- 9.1; P = 0.02). The estimated median overall survival was 26.5 versus 18.3 months (P = 0.68) in IBC patients and 37.4 versus 18.3 months (P = 0.016) in non-IBC patients with CTCs < 5 and CTCs >= 5, respectively. Conclusions: Metastatic IBC patients had a lower prevalence and fewer CTCs in comparison to metastatic non-IBC patients. Survival of metastatic IBC patients with < 5 CTCs was not significantly better than that of patients with >= 5 CTCs. Further research is warranted with prospective assessment of CTCs in IBC patients and their biological characterization.