In a national study presented earlier today at the 2008 American College of Surgeons (ACS) Clinical Congress, a researcher reported that “women under 40 years of age diagnosed with Stage I breast cancer are 44 percent more likely to die than older women.” According to Julie A. Margenthaler, MD, assistant professor of surgery, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, “These are women with similar size tumor and lymph node status. The characteristics of the tumor itself, however, portend a poorer prognosis.
The research team conducted a retrospective study of 243,012 patients diagnosed with breast cancer in the 1988C2003 Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program. Of these, 6.4 percent were under 40 years of age and 93.6 percent were 40 and older. They looked at all young women with Stage I cancers and compared them with older women with Stage I cancers. They performed the same review for Stages II, III, and IV.
Overall, when all stages are incorporated into the analysis, women under age 40 are 39 percent more likely to die from breast cancer than older women. This breakdown was based on a hazards ratio survival analysis, which is the standard analysis for this type of study.
SOURCE American College of Surgeons