Survival rates among breast cancer patients from a hospital based cancer registry, Thrissur, Kerala, India

Abstract

Introduction: Breast cancer is a biologically heterogeneous disease and patients with the same diagnostic and clinical prognostic profiles can have markedly different clinical outcomes. This difference is possibly caused by the limitation of our current taxonomy of breast cancers, which groups molecularly distinct diseases into clinical classes based mainly on morphology. Objectives: The study objective was to assess the survival rates of breast cancer patients of all immunohistochemical subtypes at a hospital-based cancer registry, Thrissur, Kerala. Materials and Methods: After obtaining Institutional Ethical Clearance we included 202 patients of histologically diagnosed breast carcinoma who had been diagnosed in the year 2016. Data was obtained from the patient files. Associations between tumor subtypes and survival rates were examined. Results: Of the 202 patients, 197 were females and 3 were males. The mean age of the study population was 55.9 ± 11.8 years. The survival rate at three years was 76.5%. Conclusions: It was found that the survival rate at three years for the study population was 76.5%. Community-based surveys will give a better outlook regarding the survival rates in the general population. More studies from developing countries like India are appreciated to understand the burden of disease.