Surveillance for Distant Metastasis in Breast Cancer Patients Who Underwent Contemporary Management: A Report from the Korean Breast Cancer Society Survivor Research Group

Current guidelines recommend against the use of routine imaging tests to detect distant metastasis in asymptomatic breast cancer patients. However, recent advancements in effective therapeutics and diagnostic accuracy have raised the need to reassess the clinical efficacy of intensive metastasis surveillance. We report the results of a multicenter retrospective study to investigate the association between intensive imaging studies and survival outcomes. We retrospectively reviewed the data of 4130 patients who underwent surgery from 11 hospitals in Korea between January 2010 and December 2011. Patients were divided into two groups on the basis of the intensity of metastasis imaging studies during their disease-free period. The types and intervals of the imaging studies were based on each physician’s decisions. High-intensive screening showed a shorter distant metastasis-free survival [p < 0.001, hazard ratio (HR) 1.62; 95