Association of clinical, histopathological and immunohistochemical prognostic factors of invasive breast tumors and thermographic findings

The purpose of the paper was to analyse and compare infrared thermographic findings with clinical, histopathological and immunohistochemical prognostic parameters in female patients with invasive breast tumor. Methods: A pre-operative thermography was made in 75 female patients with breast invasive tumors. The study analysed an individual impact of each clinical, histopathological (HP), and immunohistochemical (IHC) factors on thermographic findings, the joint impact of all factors and combined impacts according to the IHC phenotypes. Results: Statistically significant difference of thermographic findings between healthy and affected breast was found for positive human epidermal growth factor receptor-2 (HER-2) tumors, negative progesterone receptors (PR−) and a high proliferative activity (Ki-67 > 30%) (p < 0.05). Dependent on the IHC phenotype, temperatures varied from the coldest (ER+, PR+, HER-2−) tumor towards the warmest tumors (ER+, PR−, HER-2+).Conclusions: According to the results of this study, the increased temperature was more dependent on the IHC phenotypes of the tumor than on other clinical and histopathological prognostic factors. Moreover, tumor size had no influence on increased temperature.