Breast cancer treatment: evolving approaches but stable results

This report describes the outcome of 530 women with breast cancer diagnosed from 1968 through 1983 and represents a demographic population rather than a referred selected one. The data represents the results of evolving breast cancer treatment approaches during the past 2 decades and is particularly useful as a measure of the total population denominator, free of selection factors that confound reports detailing a surgical, radiation, or chemotherapy experience. During the time interval reviewed, the standard treatment approach of the primary changed from radical mastectomy to biopsy and radiation therapy. Chemotherapy policy evolved from single agent treatment for relapse to multiple drug programs as adjuvant or for relapse. The major findings were: The 5-, 10-, and 15-year survival rates for the intervals 1972-75, 1976-79, and 1980-83 were slightly better than the earliest interval 1968-71, but with no statistically significant improvement. The frequency of favorable disease (Stages Tis, 1) increased from 16 to 31 percent during the interval but the mean age remained the same suggesting that patient education programs, availability of health insurance, or mammography may have lead to identifying patients with more favorable disease. Mastectomy has been replaced by breast conserving surgery and radiation as the most common treatment of the primary. Patients treated by surgery and biopsy/radiation had identical survival outcomes. It was not possible to detect improved survival that could be ascribed to the adoption of multiple agent chemotherapy but the magnitude of the effect is calculated to be on the order of 2% of the total patient population diagnosed. Death due to breast cancer decreases with time after diagnosis but is still 4% per year, 10 years after treatment. The findings suggest that progress has been made in detection, breast conservation, and palliation of symptoms in many subpopulations, but the end results for the total breast cancer population have remained stable during an era when the treatment approach evolved markedly.