evaluation of involvement of axillary lymph nodes with ki-67 expression in patients with breast cancer

Background: breast cancer is the first leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women. ki-67 is being used for evaluation of the prognosis of patients with breast cancer. objectives: the aim of the current study was to explore the association of the involvement of axillary lymph nodes status with the expression of ki-67 in patients with breast cancer. methods: a total of 449 patients were enrolled followed by evaluation of the association of ki67 levels with demographic, pathologic, and survival data of patients, using chi-square, logistic regression models, student t test and mann-whitney. results: we observed a significant relationship between the expression level of ki-67 and stage of tumor (p = 0.012), positive progesterone receptor (p = 0.003), and subtype pathologic features (p < 0.05). also, a significant difference was detected between her2 and expression level of ki-67 (p = 0.015). survival analysis showed the association for ki-67 (p = 0.02), age (p = 0.005), stage of tumor (p < 0.05), lymph node involvement (p = 0.001), and the her2 (p = 0.024) with clinical outcome (e.g., overall survival or disease free survival) of patients with breast cancer. conclusions: the results of this study demonstrated that the overexpression of ki-67 was associated with large tumors, progesterone receptor expression, and stage of tumor, but it was not related with lymph node involvement.