Objective:Several studies indicated that many factors have relationship with the metastatic sites of advanced breast cancer.This retrospective study investigated the high risk factors which related to the different metastatic sites of stage IV breast cancer.Patients and methods:From January 2003 to December 2005 a total of 387 consecutive breast cancer patients were retrospectively analyzed.The relationships between different categorical variables and breast cancer were identified by Chi-square tests.Results:The high risk factors of metastatic breast cancer included the overexpression of HER-2 and lymph nodes invasion.The overexpression of HER-2 and lymph nodes invasion had a significantly difference between metastatic breast cancer and breast cancer without metastasis(P=0.018,P<0.001,respectively).As for metastatic breast cancer patients with only one single metastatic organ,the overexpression of HER-2 had a significantly high positive rate in patients with visceral metastases when compared with bone metastasis(P=0.045).Conclusion:The overexpression of HER-2 and lymph nodes invasion significantly influenced the metastasis of breast cancer.Overexpression of Her-2 was high risk factors for breast cancer developed to visceral metastases disease.