ArticleClinical & translational oncology : official publication of the Federation of Spanish Oncology Societies and of the National Cancer Institute of Mexico2025
Reliability of core needle biopsy for HER2-low early-stage breast cancer.
Article in Clinical & translational oncology : official publication of the Federation of Spanish Oncology Societies and of the National Cancer Institute of Mexico, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- "HER2-Low" and the Challenge of Repurposing Legacy HER2 IHC Biomarker Assays.Current oncology (Toronto, Ont.) · 2026Article
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15 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundThe reliability of core needle biopsy (CNB) for HER2-positive breast cancer is well established. However, data on HER2-low and the potential for inconsistencies with surgical samples are limited. MATERIALS AND
methodsConcordance between CNB and surgical samples was assessed using the unweighted Cohen kappa statistic (Kc) in a consecutive series of 776 treatment-naïve early-stage breast cancer patients. Logistic regression models were used to evaluate the association between concordance and clinico-pathological features.
resultsThe agreement for HER2-positive status between CNB and surgical specimens was high at 95%, with a Kc value of 0.86 indicating almost perfect agreement. However, 65 of 123 (53%) cases initially classified as HER2-0 were reclassified as HER2 1 + or 2 + /ISH-negative, and 89 of 374 (24%) cases initially classified as HER2 1 + /2 + were HER2-0 in surgical samples. This resulted in a Kc value of 0.22, indicating fair agreement in classifying HER2-0 versus HER2-low breast cancer. Tumor size was a significant factor influencing discordance, with tumors larger than 2 cm having double the risk of misclassification.
conclusionThese findings suggest that HER2 status should be retested, particularly for large tumors initially diagnosed as HER2-0, in light of new effective therapies for HER2-low breast cancer, such as antibody-drug conjugates.
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