Table 1. Patient characteristics by interval from surgery to adjuvant chemotherapy.
| Characteristics | Interval from surgery to chemotherapy initiation (weeks) | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total (n=1,408) | 0-4 (n=871) | 4-8 (n=446) | >8 (n=91) | P# | |||||
| n | % | n | % | n | % | n | % | ||
| Median age, years | 50 | 50 | 49 | 51 | 0.02 | ||||
| Tumor size, cm | |||||||||
| ≤2 | 383 | 28.5 | 244 | 29.2 | 114 | 27.1 | 25 | 28.7 | 0.31 |
| 2-5 | 847 | 63.0 | 522 | 62.4 | 275 | 65.5 | 50 | 57.5 | |
| >5 | 114 | 8.5 | 71 | 8.5 | 31 | 7.4 | 12 | 13.8 | |
| Number of positive lymph nodes | |||||||||
| 0 | 493 | 40.0 | 320 | 41.8 | 133 | 34.8 | 40 | 48.2 | 0.02 |
| 1-3 | 389 | 31.6 | 248 | 32.4 | 122 | 31.9 | 19 | 22.9 | |
| ≥4 | 349 | 28.4 | 198 | 25.8 | 127 | 33.2 | 24 | 28.9 | |
| Surgical modality | |||||||||
| MS | 1,341 | 95.4 | 828 | 95.3 | 424 | 95.3 | 89 | 97.8 | 0.54 |
| BCS | 64 | 4.6 | 41 | 4.7 | 21 | 4.7 | 2 | 2.2 | |
| Endocrine therapy | |||||||||
| No | 687 | 49.3 | 421 | 48.7 | 229 | 51.9 | 37 | 41.6 | 0.18 |
| Yes | 707 | 50.7 | 443 | 51.3 | 212 | 48.1 | 52 | 58.4 | |
| Molecular subtype | |||||||||
| Luminal-A | 667 | 47.4 | 431 | 49.5 | 191 | 42.8 | 45 | 49.5 | 0.08 |
| Luminal-B | 328 | 23.3 | 188 | 21.6 | 120 | 26.9 | 20 | 22.0 | |
| TNBC | 270 | 19.2 | 155 | 17.8 | 95 | 21.3 | 20 | 22.0 | |
| HER2+ | 143 | 10.2 | 97 | 11.1 | 40 | 9.0 | 6 | 6.6 | |
Abbreviations: BCS, breast conservative surgery; MS, mastectomy; TNBC, triple-negative breast cancer
Some cases had missing data; the number of missing cases is not shown in the table.
#P value for different distribution in 3 groups is tested by heterogeneous x2.