Background: Breast cancer in young women is associated with unfavourable tumour biology and is the main cause of death in this group. Conditional survival analysis estimates survival rates under the pre-condition of already having survived a certain time.
Objectives: To describe conditional disease-free and overall survival of female breast cancer patients according to clinical subtypes and age.
Methods: This study analyses information from 1,858 breast cancer patients aged between 21 and 54 years, who were taking part in a post-therapeutic rehab programme (time between diagnosis and rehab start: maximum 24, median 11 months). Mean follow-up time was 3.6 years. We describe biological, clinical and pathological features in regard to different age groups (<40 and ≥40 years) and report conditional 5-year survival rates for overall and disease-free survival, and Cox proportional hazard models.
Results: Very young and young patients differed in regard to hormone receptor negativity, tumour grade, lymphovascular invasion, and molecular subtypes. Young women bore triple-negative and HER2-like disease more frequently. Conditional 5-year overall survival did not differ substantially between women <40 and 40-54 years of age (95 vs. 96%). It was highest for women with cancer of the luminal A subtype (98%) and lowest for the triple-negative subtype (91%). Lymphangiosis was a significant predictor of death. Results for disease-free survival were comparable.
Conclusions: Conditional 5-year overall survival after non-metastatic breast cancer was as high as 95.5%, and disease-free survival was 85.2%. When controlling for time between diagnosis and rehab start, molecular subtypes influenced overall and disease-free survival prospects. When additionally controlling for clinical characteristics, this effect only remained stable for disease-free survival.
Keywords: Non-metastatic breast cancer; Survival; Young adults.
Copyright © 2021 by S. Karger GmbH, Freiburg.