Risk factors and natural history of breast cancer in younger Chinese women.

Aim: To investigate the age differences in the risk factors, clinicopathological characteristics and patterns of treatment of female breast cancer patients.

Methods: Seven thousand one hundred and fifty-two women with primary breast cancer from the Hong Kong Breast Cancer Registry were recruited after receiving patients' consent, they were asked to complete standardized questionnaires which captured their sociodemographic characteristics and risk factors associated with breast cancer development. Among them, clinicopathological data and patterns of treatment were further collected from medical records of 5523 patients with invasive breast cancers.

A randomized controlled trial of psychosocial interventions using the psychophysiological framework for Chinese breast cancer patients.

This study aimed to investigate the psychophysiological outcomes of different psychosocial interventions for breast cancer patients. Participants were randomly assigned into 3 intervention groups, namely, Body-Mind-Spirit (BMS), Supportive-Expressive (SE), and Social Support Self-Help (SS) groups; a no-intervention group was used as control. Salivary cortisol was used as the physiological stress marker.

Short-term, medium-term, long-term, and lifetime risks of developing and dying of breast carcinoma in a Westernized Chinese population: Evidence from Hong Kong between 1976 and 2000.

Background: Estimates of lifetime and shorter-term risks of developing and dying of breast carcinoma are useful translational statistics for risk communication; however, these statistics are unknown for Chinese women, who account for one-fifth of the world's female population. In the current study, the authors examined age-specific 5-year, 10-year, 20-year, and lifetime risks of breast carcinoma incidence and disease-related mortality among Hong Kong women.

Methods: Multiple-decrement life tables were constructed by applying age-specific incidence and mortality rates obtained from cross-sectional data to a hypothetic birth cohort.

Time trends of lung cancer incidence by histologic types and smoking prevalence in Hong Kong 1983-2000.

The gender difference in epidemiology of lung cancer has been postulated to be due to the higher susceptibility of women to risk factors especially tobacco smoking. Alternatively, such difference may also be explained by some unknown gender-specific etiological factors, which can have been masked if both the female and male prevalence of smoking are high. Hong Kong has a low female smoking prevalence rate and therefore the trend of the female incidence of lung cancer is particularly interesting because it can reflect the effects of the non-smoking related risk factors more clearly.

Changing epidemiology of nasopharyngeal carcinoma in Hong Kong over a 20-year period (1980-99): an encouraging reduction in both incidence and mortality.

Epidemiological data from the Hong Kong Cancer Registry for the period 1980-99 were analyzed. Altogether 21,768 new cases of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and 8,664 related deaths were registered. In both genders, the peak incidence occurred in the 50-59 years age group, and this age distribution pattern remained similar throughout.

Early stage nasal NK/T-cell lymphoma: clinical outcome, prognostic factors, and the effect of treatment modality.

Purpose: To determine the clinical outcome, prognostic factors, and effect of adding combination chemotherapy to radiation therapy on disease control and survival in early stage nasal natural killer (NK)/T-cell lymphoma.

Methods And Materials: A retrospective "intent to treat" analysis was carried out on 79 patients treated consecutively with curative intent between 1977 and June 2001. They all had early stage (Ann Arbor Stage I(E): 63, II(E):16) nasal NK/T-cell lymphoma.