Background: This report shows the effect of period of diagnosis and treatment in the breast cancer survival in a public hospital between 1999 and 2008. The main aim of this article is the knowledge of the different demographic, clinical and pathological variables among the women collected in our database in order to establish if there have been variations in the evolution of the survival rate in the this decade.
Methods: 2132 women were included in the Hospital Cancer Registry between 1999 and 2008. These patients were followed-up by the National Death Index Agency and the last date of medical consultation, up to 31st march 2011. Observed survival was estimated by the actuarial method, and the relative survival was calculated by the Ederer II method. Survival was presented by fixed time point, as such 1, 3 and 5 year, after diagnosis. Confidence Interval 95% was included.
Results: The average age at diagnosis was 59,9 ± 14,2 years old. At the time of diagnosis, 12,3% presented in situ carcinoma; 51,8% localized carcinoma; 30% positive lymph nodes and 5% disseminated carcinoma. 72,8% of the cases were ductal carcinomas and 11,8% lobular carcinomas. Surgery resection was applied in the 90,8% of the cases, chemotherapy was administered in 23,4% and radiotherapy in the 56,7%. The overall relative survival was 88% in 5 years; 99, 9% for "in situ" carcinoma, 94,3% for localized carcinoma, 83,7% for regional carcinomas and 25,7% for disseminated carcinoma. In the third year of follow-up, women diagnosed in 2008 presented a relative survival of 94,8% versus 89,5% of those diagnosed in 1999. However, during the follow-up the estimation fluctuated without any significant tendency as a whole or by stages.
Conclusions: Evolution of relative survival per year of diagnosis didn't show any significant increase, even when it was compared across the cohorts of two five-years periods or when it was studied by cohorts of cancer stage at diagnosis. In a 10 year period, relative survival hasn't changed in the population treated in this hospital.