The association of comorbid conditions and BMI on overall survival in geriatric breast cancer patients.

Abstract

e21525 Background: Breast cancer is the most common cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death in women. More than one-half of all women diagnosed with breast cancer are older than 65 years, and the incidence increases with age. Geriatric cancer patients also have higher comorbidity than the general cancer population. Patients with 3 or more comorbid conditions had a 20-fold higher rate of mortality from causes other than breast cancer. The purpose of this study was to determine whether specific comorbidities associated with specific organ systems, in addition to increased BMI, resulted in decreased survival. Methods: In this retrospective analysis, 269 patients with histologically confirmed invasive or in-situ breast cancer and above 65 years of age at the time of diagnosis were eligible. Patient comorbidities were recorded by system, including cardiovascular, renal, pulmonary, endocrine, neurologic, psychiatric and other systems. Patient BMI was also recorded. The primary outcome was overall survival (OS). Survival analysis was conducted by Kaplan Meier estimation and Cox proportional hazards regression analysis. Results: Patients with renal comorbidities were found to have decreased OS, disease free and progression free survival compared with rest of the population (HR 2.65, p = 0.023; HR 2.71, p = 0.021; HR 27.5, p = 0.019). For patients with cardiovascular (HR 1.46, p = 0.479), pulmonary (HR 1.63, p = 0.176), endocrine (HR 0.99, p = 0.991), neurologic (HR 1.92, p = 0.15) and psychiatric (HR 1.68, p = 0.187) comorbidities, there was no significant difference in OS compared with their counterparts. Patients with 4 or more systemic comorbidities had decreased OS compared with patients with either 1 or 2 systemic comorbidities (HR 0.178, p = 0.012; HR 0.404, p = 0.038). There was no significant change in OS with increased BMI (HR 0.998, p = 0.871). Conclusions: In patients with newly diagnosed breast cancer age 65 or older, those with renal comorbidities were found to have decreased OS, DFS and PFS. Patients with 4 or more systemic comorbidities also had decreased OS compared with those who had 1 or 2 comorbidities. Other comorbidities and BMI did not affect OS in these patients.