Breast cancer in "young" women: Age cutoff and clinicopathologic features.

Abstract

e12019 Background: Age of patients play a key role in outcome of breast cancer, and therefore influences choice of treatment. In most studies, "young" is defined as being below 40 or 35 years. However, there are conflicts concerning definition of younger and older patients. In this study, we aim to establish a more appropriate age cut-off between “younger” and “older” breast cancer patients. Methods: A total of 5984 female breast cancer patients recruited in the Breast Cancer Registry of the Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University during 2008 to 2014 were enrolled. Patients were divided into 11 groups by every 5 years’ age difference. The clinical characteristics and overall survival (OS) were compared among these age groups. Results: Among the five groups under age 45 (n = 1771, 30.0%), larger proportion of patients underwent breast conservation surgery in the “30-34” group (p = .027), and more patients were found with family history in the “25-29” group than in other groups (p = .029). No significant difference was found in OS (p = .059), clinicopathological stage, lymph node status, ER/PR status, HER2 status, or Ki-67 status among those five groups. For patients above 45 (n = 4813, 70.0%), differences were found in OS (p = .001) and significant differences with clinicopathological features (lymph node status, ER/PR status, HER2 status and Ki-67 status) were shown between younger and the older age groups (p = .001) among the six groups, except for family history (p = .066). Conclusions: Clinicopathological characteristics and survival status are similar among breast cancer patients under 45 years and vitiate among older patients. Age 45 is an appropriate cut-off for clinical grouping of breast cancer patients by age .