Annual report of the Japanese Breast Cancer Registry for 2019

This is an annual report by the Japanese Breast Cancer Society regarding the clinical data on breast cancer extracted from the National Clinical Database-Breast Cancer Registry (NCD-BCR) of Japan. Here, we present an updated summary of 98,300 breast cancer cases registered in 2019. The median age at cancer diagnosis was 61 years (interquartile range 49-72 years), and 30.6% of the breast cancer patients were premenopausal. Of the 93,840 patients without distant metastases, 14,118 (15.0%) and 42,047 (44.8%) were diagnosed with stage 0 and I disease, respectively. Breast-conserving surgery was performed in 42,080 (44.8%) patients. Regarding axillary procedures, 62,677 (66.8%) and 7371 (7.9%) patients underwent sentinel node biopsy and axillary node dissection after biopsy, respectively. Whole breast irradiation was administered to 29,795 (70.8%) of the 42,080 patients undergoing breast-conserving surgery. Chest wall irradiation was administered to 5524 (11.1%) of the 49,637 patients who underwent mastectomy. Of the 6912 clinically lymph node-negative patients who received preoperative therapy, 5250 (76.0%) and 427 (6.2%) underwent sentinel node biopsy and axillary node dissection after biopsy, respectively; however, 602 (8.7%) patients initially underwent axillary node dissection without biopsy.