Breast Cancer Among Patients Below Age 40: Clinicopathological Features and Survival Results

Abstract

Among young women breast cancer exhibits quite a heterogenous, quite agressive and complex biology. The purpose of this study is to describe clinicopathological features that affect survival ratio among breast cancer women below age-40. 803 patients having received adjuvant radiotherapy were retrospectively analyzed. Patients were categorized under two groups: age ≤ 40 and age > 40. Treatments and clinicopathological features were analyzed. 19.4% (156) of 803 patients were below age 40. In patient group below age 40, more neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) was administered compared to the patient group above age 40 (p= 0.007) and it was detected that there were higher incidences of stage 3 disease (p= 0.011), more advanced nodal disease (N2-3) (p= 0.046) and more metastasis (p< 0.001). In conducted multivariate analysis for all age groups presence of N2-3 disease (p= 0.011) and in below age-40 group being grad 3 (p= 0.025) was found to affect overall survival (OS) negatively. In disease free survival (DFS)-focused analysis; for all age groups, receiving NAC (p= 0.001), presence of N2-3 disease (p= 0.002) and being below age 40 were found to have a nega- tive effect; in below age-40 group presence of NAC (p= 0.013) and perineural invasion (p= 0.035); in above age-40 group receiving NAC (p= 0.023) and presence of N2-3 disease (p= 0.035) had a negative effect. Being below age 40 is an independent prognostic factor for DFS. It is suggested to conduct further studies on specific tumor biology to analyze the same group with respect to the characteristics of more aggressive tumors. Keywords: Breast cancer, Young age, Prognosis, Survival