• Breast Cancer Res. Treat. · Mar 2002

    Survival of women after breast conserving surgery for early stage breast cancer.

    • Du Xianglin Department of Internal Medicine, Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health, Sealy Center on Aging, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston 77555-0460, USA. xdu@utmb.edu, Jean L Freeman, Ann B Nattinger, and James S Goodwin.
    • Department of Internal Medicine, Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health, Sealy Center on Aging, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston 77555-0460, USA. xdu@utmb.edu
    • Breast Cancer Res. Treat. 2002 Mar 1; 72 (1): 23-31.

    BackgroundIncreasing numbers of older women with breast cancer are receiving breast-conserving surgery (BCS). However, substantial numbers of them are not receiving either axillary dissection or adjuvant irradiation.ObjectiveTo determine whether failure to perform axillary dissection or irradiation is associated with decreased survival in women with early-stage breast cancer.MethodWe studied 26,290 women aged > or = 25 in 1988-1993 from the surveillance, epidemiology, and end results (SEER) data and 5,328 women aged > or = 65 in 1991-1993 from SEER-Medicare linked data, who had early-stage breast cancer and received BCS.ResultsTwenty seven percent of women aged > or = 25 receiving BCS did not receive axillary dissection, most of whom (74%) were age > or = 65. Women receiving BCS with axillary dissection had lower 7-year breast cancer-specific mortality than did those without dissection (hazard ratio = 0.53, 95% confidence interval: 0.44-0.63). We found an interaction between receipt of axillary dissection and radiotherapy on survival of older women after BCS. Women who received either axillary dissection or radiotherapy experienced similar survivals to those who received both axillary dissection and radiation, while women who received neither treatment experienced poorer survival (hazard ratio = 1.76, 1.23-2.52), after controlling for demographics, tumor size and comorbidity.ConclusionsWomen who receive neither axillary dissection nor radiation therapy after BCS experience an increased risk of death from breast cancer. The lack of improvement in the past two decades in survival of older women with breast cancer may be explained in part by the increasing use of treatments that do not address potential tumor in axillary nodes.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…