Risks of second primary cancers among 584,965 female and male breast cancer survivors in England: a 25-year retrospective cohort study.

Background: Second primary cancers (SPCs) after breast cancer (BC) present an increasing public health burden, with little existing research on socio-demographic, tumour, and treatment effects. We addressed this in the largest BC survivor cohort to date, using a novel linkage of National Disease Registration Service datasets.

Methods: The cohort included 581,403 female and 3562 male BC survivors diagnosed between 1995 and 2019. We estimated standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) for combined and site-specific SPCs using incidences for England, overall and by age at BC and socioeconomic status. We estimated incidences and Kaplan-Meier cumulative risks stratified by age at BC, and assessed risk variation by socio-demographic, tumour, and treatment characteristics using Cox regression.

Findings: Both genders were at elevated contralateral breast (SIR: 2.02 (95% CI: 1.99-2.06) females; 55.4 (35.5-82.4) males) and non-breast (1.10 (1.09-1.11) females, 1.10 (1.00-1.20) males) SPC risks. Non-breast SPC risks were higher for females younger at BC diagnosis (SIR: 1.34 (1.31-1.38) <50 y, 1.07 (1.06-1.09) ≥50 y) and more socioeconomically deprived (SIR: 1.00 (0.98-1.02) least deprived quintile, 1.34 (1.30-1.37) most).

Interpretation: Enhanced SPC surveillance may benefit BC survivors, although specific recommendations require more detailed multifactorial risk and cost-benefit analyses. The associations between deprivation and SPC risks could provide clinical management insights.

Funding: CRUK Catalyst Award CanGene-CanVar (C61296/A27223). Cancer Research UK grant: PPRPGM-Nov 20∖100,002. This work was supported by core funding from the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre (NIHR203312)]. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.