Increasing Amount of Breast Cancer-Specific Death Due to Stage 1, 2 Disease

THURSDAY, Oct. 10, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Patients with stage I/II breast cancers have excellent prognosis, but account for more than 60 percent of breast cancer-specific death (BCSD) because of their large absolute volumes, according to a study published online Sept. 30 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. 

Michal Marczyk, Ph.D., from Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice, Poland, and colleagues used the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database (1975 to 2017) to identify 972,763 patients who were female sex at birth and had one primary tumor type, surgery, American Joint Committee on Cancer (6th edition) stage >0, no bilateral cancer, and available survival data. Trends in the fractions of annual BCSD due to stage I, II, III, and IV disease were examined.

The researchers found that the contribution of stage I and II cancers to BCSD increased significantly from 16.2 to 23.1 percent and from 30.7 to 39.5 percent, respectively, between 2000 and 2017. During the same period, the contribution of stages III and IV cancers decreased from 36.4 to 30.3 percent and from 16.7 to 7.1 percent, respectively. BCSD due to T1a, T1b, and T1c node-negative cancers in 2000 were 0.92, 4.0, and 10.7 percent, respectively, which increased significantly to 1.9, 5.8, and 14.7 percent, respectively, by 2017. Similar temporal trends were seen for hormone receptor-positive and negative cancers. For all-cause mortality, the contribution of BCSD declined from 23.9 to 16.6 percent for stage I cancers and from 47.7 to 36.9 percent for stage II cancers by 2017.

"To further reduce breast cancer death, strategies are needed to identify and treat patients with stage I/II disease who remain at risk for recurrence," the authors write.

Several authors disclosed ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

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