Optimum treatment for young women with breast cancer needs to be determined

doi:10.1136/bmj.321.7252.53

BMJ 2000;321:53 ( 1 July )

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Optimum treatment for young women with breast cancer needs to be determined

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EDITOR $---$ The paper by Kroman et al on factors influencing the effect of age on prognosis in breast cancer has important implicationsfor service delivery,¹ increased amounts of chemotherapy beingrequired for young women. The authors imply that only women athigh risk received adjuvant chemotherapy. In all, 36.3% of their867 patients under 35 were in the low risk group, an excess mortalitybeing associated with not receivingchemotherapy.

We used the Yorkshire Cancer Registry (now part of the Northern and Yorkshire Cancer Registration and Information Service)to investigate the uptake of chemotherapy in this group of patientsover the 15 years from 1980 to 1994 and determine its effect onsurvival.

Only 304 (19.8%) of the 1534 patients under 35 received adjuvant chemotherapy. Their overall five year survival rate was 60%(95% confidence interval 54.8 to 65.8) compared with 63% (60.6to 66.0) in those who did not receive chemotherapy. When 41 patientswho presented with overt . . . [Full text of this article]

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