Table 7. Interrelationships between the clinicopathological characteristics in patients with ER-positive primary operable invasive ductal breast cancer (n=283).

	Grade ( P -value)	Involved lymph node ( P -value)	PR status ( P -value)	HER-2 status ( P -value)	Ki-67 status ( P -value)	Vascular invasion ( P -value)	General inflammatory cell infiltrate ( P -value)	Tumour lymphocyte infiltrate ( P -value)	Tumour plasma cell infiltrate ( P -value)	Other inflammatory cells infiltrate ( P -value)	CD68+ ( P -value)
Size (⩽20/21–50/>50 mm)	0.011	<0.001	0.956	0.791	0.007	<0.001	0.228	0.506	0.047	0.968	0.075
Grade (I/II/III)		0.106	0.944	<0.001	<0.001	<0.001	0.063	0.718	0.617	0.330	0.005
Involved lymph node (0/1–3/>3)			0.310	0.251	0.013	<0.001	0.759	0.218	0.185	0.494	0.356
Progesterone –receptor status (PR−/PR+)				0.011	0.587	0.924	0.722	0.122	0.007	0.722	0.385
HER-2 status (HER-2−/HER-2+)					0.018	0.102	0.789	0.561	0.986	0.677	0.475
Ki-67 proliferative activity (low Ki-67/high Ki-67)						0.019	0.362	0.751	0.964	0.820	0.070
Vascular invasion (absent/present)							0.113	0.346	0.083	0.174	0.310
General inflammatory cell infiltrate (absent/present)								<0.001	0.002	0.060	0.056
Tumour lymphocyte infiltrate (low grade/high grade)									<0.001	<0.001	0.485
Tumour plasma cell infiltrate (low grade/high grade)										<0.001	0.859
Other inflammatory cell infiltrate (low grade/high grade)											0.204

Abbreviations: CI=confidence interval; ER=oestrogen receptor; HER-2=human epidermal growth factor receptor-2; HR=hazard ratio; PR=progesterone receptor. Bold values indicate P⩽0.01.