[Breast cancer in Mexico. Is it a young women disease?]

Breast cancer in México has the second place in frequency in general population (10.6%) as well as in females (16.4%). There has been found an increase in mortality from 3.6, in 1985, to 6 x 100,000 inhabitants, in 1994. Breast cancer diagnosis is made in advanced stages (III, IV, N.C.) in two out of three of our patients and a great proportion of them are younger than 50 years old. In order to know if age at diagnosis of breast cancer women in Mexico is similar of that of women of other countries, and in consequence, if breast screening has to be done as they have determined, we analyzed the age at diagnosis of 29,075 mexican women with breast cancer from 1993 to 1996. We found that median age of our patients was 51 years, one decade younger than that of European or white American women (60-64 years), and 45.5% of Mexican women are less than 50 years old at diagnosis of breast cancer, therefore, breast cancer screening indications adopted in Mexico, do not cover, not even theoretically, almost 50% of our women. It is mandatory to determine indications of breast screening according to our reality.