Introduction: Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women. It affects mostly women between the ages of 60 and 70; however, in the past years, the number of younger female patients has been increasing. The incidence of breast cancer has been rising worldwide, especially in the United States and Western Europe. Breast carcinoma mortality, on the other hand, has shown a slight decrease due to early screening programmes and advanced treatment methods.
Methods: We included patients who had undergone surgery for breast carcinoma in the 1st Department of Surgery at Teaching Hospital in Olomouc between 1 January 2008 and 31 December 2012. In each patient, her age at the time of diagnosis/surgery was calculated. All patients were divided into 10-year age groups. At the same time, a sub-group of breast cancer patients younger than 45 years was created. We compared the numbers of patients in the respective groups and sub-groups in every year. The mean age and the median of age were also calculated. To evaluate the benefit of mammary screening, we compared the staging of operated tumours in the different years studied. The results were statistically processed and evaluated.
Results: The total number of 980 patients underwent surgery for breast carcinoma at our department between 2008 and 2012 with age ranging from 20 to 88 years. 101 of them were younger than 45 years. The mean age of the patients was 59 years, the median was 60 years. The total number of patients increased from 153 in 2008 to 240 in 2012. There was no significant increase in the number of patients younger than 45 years. There were more patients diagnosed with stage II carcinoma and fewer patients with stage III carcinoma in 2012 than in 2010.
Conclusion: The analysis of our group of patients confirmed the increasing tendencies of breast cancer incidence in total. We did not prove a statistically significant increase in the number of patients in pre-screening age (i.e., younger than 45 years). More frequent diagnosis of early-stage disease was detected, especially during the last three evaluated years.Key words: breast cancer - age - stage screening.