AB051. 70. Clinicopathological features and outcomes of young patients presenting with breast cancer in a district general hospital

Background: Several studies have previously reported worse outcomes in young women with breast cancer, when compared to older women; however, more recent studies have shown that young age is not an independent poor prognostic indicator.

Methods: We retrospectively analysed the data from a prospectively collected database, of all women aged 25–40 years at the time of breast cancer diagnosis presenting to our institution between 2003 and 2012. Our aim was to compare the clinicopathological characteristics, treatment, recurrence rates and disease free survival in this group compared with a randomly selected cohort of older patients (aged 55–75 years) diagnosed with breast cancer over the same time period.

Results: There were 140 cases of breast cancer in women aged 25–40 at diagnosis in our institution in that time period. The younger group were more likely to have a grade 3 cancer (50% vs. 37.1%, P=0.96). There was no significant difference in cancer size at diagnosis but the young group were more likely to be node positive at diagnosis (49.9% vs. 34.9%) and were more likely to have neoadjuvant chemotherapy (21.4% vs. 8.9%). There was no significant disease free survival (P=0.877) or difference in recurrence rates (P=0.594) between the two age groups

Conclusions: In conclusion, our study confirms the women under 40 presenting with breast cancer are more likely to have higher grade tumours and have ER negative disease. Despite this unfavourable pathology; however, younger patients had a similar 5 year survival and recurrence rate when compared to older women.

Keywords: Breast; cancer; young; clinicopathological; features