The investigation of an age as a prognostic factor of breast cancer

유방암의 예후인자로서 젊은 연령에 대한 고찰

Purpose:It has been known that the prognosis of a young woman's breast cancer is Poorer than the other woman However, the effect of age on the prognosis is not well-defined We performed this study to investigate age as a prognostic factor of breast cancer. Materials and Methods : A retrospective study was conducted for 3209 breast cancer patients who underwent operations in Department of Surgery, Seoul National University Hospital from January 1981 to December 2000. Patients were divided into two groups, young age(≤35) and old age(>35) groups. And tumor stage, histopathologic characteristics(such as histology, nuclear grade, histologic grade, hormonal receptor, etc), overall survival and disease free survival rates were compared between age groups. Results . The age ranged from 17 to 88 years. 396 patients(12.3%) were included in young age group(median=32) and 2813 Patients(87.7%) in old age group(median=47).There are more advanced stages and poor nuclear grades in young age group(p=0.000, p=0.003), By log-rank test, the young age group had poorer overall survival and disease free survival rates(p<0.05, p=0.0002). Although, the young age group had more advanced TMN stages(p=0.000) and poorer nuclear grade than the old age group(p=0.003) in multi variate analysis, the age was not a significant independent prognostic factor. (P=0.642)Conclusion: Our study showed that the age was not a significant independent prognostic factor.