Mammographic calcifications and risk of subsequent breast cancer.

Background: Women with proliferative benign breast lesions are at increased risk of breast cancer, and some studies have provided evidence that microscopic calcifications in such lesions enhance the risk.

Purpose: This study was performed to determine whether calcifications on mammograms are predictive of subsequent breast cancer.

Methods: Data for this study were collected on women enrolled at four of the clinics that participated in the Breast Cancer Detection and Demonstration Project (BCDDP).

Early detection of breast cancer.

Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in North American women. The incidence rate is increasing by about 2% annually, while the mortality rate has remained stable for 50 years. Screening by physical examination and mammography can decrease the mortality rate in women over 50 by 30%.

Racial differences in the early detection of breast cancer in metropolitan Detroit, 1978 to 1987.

This population-based study presents trends in stage at diagnosis of invasive female breast cancer during the decade from 1978 to 1987 in the Detroit metropolitan area. Its purpose is to determine whether there has been an increase in early breast cancers: those that are smaller than 2 cm at diagnosis and have no axillary lymph node involvement. Trend analyses of tumor size, node status, year of diagnosis, age, and race were performed for 17,216 incident cases drawn from the Metropolitan Detroit Cancer Surveillance System (MDCSS).

The process of recovery from breast cancer for younger and older patients. Changes during the first year.

A representative community sample of 274 breast cancer (BC) patients from the Metropolitan Detroit Cancer-Surveillance System was studied longitudinally during the year after their BC diagnosis. The adjustment of these patients to their disease was examined in terms of (1) the changes in their physical and mental health functioning; and (2) the factors that predict or facilitate the recovery process, including the independent and interactive effects of age. Comparison of the outcomes at 4 and 10 months after diagnosis manifested a significant and consistent improvement in physical functioning.

Physical and psychosocial functioning and adjustment to breast cancer. Long-term follow-up of a screening population.

The effects of age, recency of breast cancer (BC) diagnosis, and severity of the disease on adjustment outcomes were investigated in a sample of 349 women from the 10,056 women screened for BC by the University of Michigan Breast Cancer Detection Demonstration Project between 1974 and 1981. In the 1985 follow-up, data were collected from the 173 surviving BC patients who had invasive BC, and from a matched control group of 176 women who were asymptomatic of BC. Fifty-five percent of the BC patients were 5 years past diagnosis and treatment at the time of data collection.