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The outcomes of treatment for breast
cancer are improving. Five-year disease-free survival for all
patients has risen from 75% to 85%.1
This remarkable improvement in outcomes is attributable to earlier
detection through mammographic screening. More
than half of patients diagnosed with breast cancer by mammography
have stage 0 or I disease with prospects of cure approaching
90%.2
Because screening mammography is not recommended for women
before age 35, one would not expect survival to improve for young
women diagnosed with breast cancer. Young
women diagnosed with breast cancer before having mammography
have larger tumors with more nodal involvement and higher local
and distant recurrence rates than older women do.3-6
Several of these studies suggest that young
age is an independently significant adverse prognostic factor,4-6
although this is not a universal finding.7
Young patients' local and distant disease-free survival was
found to be inferior when compared with their older counterparts
in several early reports. There was a remarkable improvement
in the outcomes of breast cancer in the last decade because of
changing treatment modalities and earlier diagnosis, which prompted
us to examine whether young patients remain at a disadvantage
compared with their older counterparts. To address this issue
we studied 101 patients aged 35 and younger and compared them
with patients aged 36 and older. We used multivariate analysis
to evaluate whether young age alone is a significant independent
adverse prognostic factor for women with breast cancer who are
diagnosed with stage III or lesser stage diseases.
Introduction | Methods
| Results
| Discussion
| References
JACS |
