Clinicopathological Study of Breast Cancer in Young Females (Under 40‐Year‐Old)

Abstract

BackgroundThe average age at presentation of breast cancer in Egypt appears to be a decade earlier than in western countries. Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer‐related deaths in women under 40 years and survival rates for young women with breast cancer are lower than their older counterparts.Aimwas to assess the clinicopathological characteristics of breast cancer female patients less than 40 years and to compare them with their counterpart above the age of 40 years. In addition, the impact of age as an independent factor on survival was studied.Materials and methodsThis was a retrospective cohort study of an institutional database of all cases of breast carcinoma patients, whom prospectively were followed up during the period from January 2000 to December 2009, performed at Alexandria Main University Hospital, Egypt. After collecting data of breast carcinoma patients; clinicopathological characteristics, chosen management option and disease‐free survival (DFS), as well as overall survival (OS), were compared among the two age groups. Prognostic factors were evaluated for association with DFS and OS.ResultsIt has been found that the number of young patients (≤ 40 years) was 180 (25.4%) while the number of older patients was 529 (74.6%). The age of the patients varied between 21 years and 90 years (mean 47.8). The histopathological assessment showed that the incidence of infiltrated ductal carcinoma (IDC) was higher than the other types in both groups; 641 tumors (91.7 % from the total sample) were IDC; 165 (92.7 %) were in young age group and 476 (91.4 %) in old age group. There was no significant association between the two studied groups in relation to the histopathological types of breast carcinoma. Recurrence rates were significantly higher among young women (49.2%) when compared to older women (30.6%) (p=0.000). Five‐year DFS duration in young women was shorter, the mean follow‐up time of young patients was 44.4 months while in old age group, it was 51.6 months with a hazard ratio of 1.67 (95% CI: 1.117–2.499) greater than old patients, although there was no significant difference between the two groups as regard OS. Multivariate analyses identified larger tumor size, the presence of lymphovascular invasion and young age being ≤ 40 as independent factors associated with poor DFS.ConclusionYounger age (≤ 40 years) at the diagnosis of breast cancer can be considered an adverse prognostic factor for the development of locoregional recurrence or distant metastases.Support or Funding InformationThe study was not fundedThis abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2019 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal.