Background: Although the efficacy of adjuvant chemotherapy in prolonging survival for women with breast cancer has been well documented, limited population-based information is available on the actual use of chemotherapy.
Objective: To examine the relationship between age and chemotherapy use.
Design: Cohort study.
Setting: New Mexico.
Patients: 5101 women 20 years of age or older receiving a diagnosis of stage I, stage II, or stage IIIA breast cancer from 1991 through 1997.
Measurements: Pattern of chemotherapy use by age; logistic regression analysis to generate the odds and probabilities of receiving chemotherapy; and sensitivity analysis to estimate potential effects of unmeasured confounders.
Results: Overall, 29% of women received chemotherapy. The rate of chemotherapy use for women with stage I, stage II, or stage IIIA breast cancer was 11%, 47%, and 68%, respectively. Across all tumor stages, the use of chemotherapy decreased substantially with increasing age (P < 0.001). Overall, 66% of women younger than 45 years of age received chemotherapy compared with 44% of women between 50 and 54 years of age, 31% of women between 55 and 59 years of age, and 18% of women between 60 and 64 years of age. The decreasing pattern of chemotherapy use with age continued after adjustment for prognostic factors and was relatively insensitive to changes in unmeasured factors.
Conclusions: There is considerable discrepancy between the 1990 National Institutes of Health Consensus Conference recommendations for chemotherapy administration in women with breast cancer and the actual use of chemotherapy in the community. The decrease in use with age may relate to the decreasing efficacy of chemotherapy with age, as reported in clinical trials. Outcomes studies should address whether the recommendations are overly aggressive or whether practicing oncologists are too conservative in their use of chemotherapy.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.7326/0003-4819-138-2-200301210-00009 | DOI Listing |
Discov Oncol
January 2025
Department of General Surgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital of the Air Force Medical University, Xi'an, 710038, China.
A common digestive system cancer with a dismal prognosis and a high death rate globally is breast cancer (BRCA). BRCA recurrence, metastasis, and medication resistance are all significantly impacted by cancer stem cells (CSCs). However, the relationship between CSCs and the tumor microenvironment in BRCA individuals remains unknown, and this information is critically needed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBreast Cancer Res Treat
January 2025
Department of Breast Surgery, Fujian Medical University Union Hospital, Fuzhou, 350001, Fujian , China.
Purpose: Age stratification influences the clinicopathological features and survival outcomes of breast cancer. We aimed to understand the effect of age on gene variants in young Chinese women with breast cancer compared with those from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA).
Methods: Enrolled patients ≤ 40 years old (N = 370) underwent germline or somatic genetic testing using a 32-gene hereditary cancer panel at Fujian Union Hospital.
Breast Cancer Res Treat
January 2025
Division of Medical Oncology, Department of Medicine, Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute, 8700 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, CA, 90048, USA.
Purpose: There is an increasing incidence of young breast cancer (YBC) patients with uncertainty surrounding the factors and patterns that are contributing.
Methods: We obtained characteristics and survival data from 206,156 YBC patients (≤ 40 years of age) diagnosed between 2005 and 2019 from the National Cancer Database (NCDB). Patients were subdivided into two comparison groups based on year of diagnosis (2005-2009, Old vs.
Adv Sci (Weinh)
January 2025
Department of Pharmacology, School of Pharmacy, China Medical University, Shenyang, 110122, China.
Hydrogen sulfide (HS)-mediated protein S-sulfhydration has been shown to play critical roles in several diseases. Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) are the predominant population of immune cells present within solid tumor tissues, and they function to restrict antitumor immunity. However, no previous study has investigated the role of protein S-sulfhydration in TAM reprogramming in breast cancer (BC).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnn Surg Oncol
January 2025
Department of Surgery, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, USA.
Background: Bilateral risk-reducing mastectomies (RRMs) have been proven to decrease the risk of breast cancer in patients at high risk owing to family history or having pathogenic genetic mutations. However, few resources with consolidated data have detailed the patient experience following surgery. This systematic review features patient-reported outcomes for patients with no breast cancer history in the year after their bilateral RRM.
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