Prognostic Significance of the Tumor-Stromal Ratio in Invasive Breast Cancer and a Proposal of a New Ts-TNM Staging System

Figure 4

Patient distribution and prognostic analysis of the TNM and Ts-TNM staging system. Patients of low TSR (Ts1) in the TNM staging system were assigned to the next higher stage in the Ts-TNM staging system (red arrow), and patients of high TSR (Ts0) in the TNM staging system remained at the same stage in the Ts-TNM staging system (blue arrow) (Table 3). (a) Both TNM and Ts-TNM staging system can well distinguish BC patients into subgroups with different prognosis (b and c). TNM = tumor node metastasis; Ts-TNM = tumor-stroma tumor node metastasis; T = tumor; N = node.

(a)

(b)

(c)