Hieken, Tina J

BackgroundPatients with regionally advanced melanoma are at high risk of distant failure and unlikely to be cured by surgery alone. Neoadjuvant therapy may provide benefit in these patients.ObjectivesTo evaluate our experience with neoadjuvant systemic therapy in high‐risk stage III patients.MethodsRetrospective review of patients with advanced stage III disease who received neoadjuvant therapy between August 2009 and August 2016 at Mayo Clinic Rochester.ResultsTwenty‐three cases met our inclusion criteria, 16 with resectable disease and 7 with unresectable disease. No patients with resectable disease and one patient with borderline resectable disease progressed regionally, prohibiting surgical resection. Five of seven patients with unresectable disease were down‐staged to a resectable state. Six of twenty‐three (26%) had a CR and five are alive at last follow‐up. Fifteen of twenty three patients (65%) progressed with a median progression free survival of 11 months; however, the 5 year overall survival estimate was 84%.ConclusionsNeoadjuvant systemic therapy is a reasonable approach for patients with advanced but resectable/borderline resectable disease and the risk of losing regional control is low. Our data also suggest some patients with unresectable disease will be converted to resectable and a complete clinical response to treatment can be obtained in approximately one quater of patients.

Background and ObjectivesAdenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC) is a rare, typically triple‐negative, breast cancer reported to have a favorable prognosis and low rate of nodal metastasis. No consensus guidelines exist for axillary staging and treatment.MethodsWe identified all patients with ACC evaluated at our institution from January 1994 to August 2016. Patient, tumor, and treatment variables were abstracted and analyzed.ResultsWe identified 20 pure ACCs (0.13% of all invasive breast cancers) with size range 0.2‐4.8 cm, in 19 women, median age 59 years. Preoperative axillary ultrasound was normal in 10/13 women and suspicious in 3/13 who had a subsequent negative lymph node fine needle aspiration (FNA). Fifteen patients (75%) had sentinel lymph node surgery and were pathologically node‐negative, while the remaining five had no axillary surgery. With 3.6 years median follow‐up (range 0.2‐38.6 years), three patients experienced an in‐breast recurrence at 2, 16, and 17 years, respectively, while none recurred in regional nodes.ConclusionsWe observed no cases of nodal metastasis in 20 consecutive cases of ACC of the breast. Preoperative axillary ultrasound with FNA of suspicious nodes accurately predicted pathologic nodal stage. These data suggest axillary surgery might be omitted safely in patients with pure ACC and a clinically negative axilla.