Clinico-Epidemiological and Pathological Characteristics of Breast Cancer in Young Women (<40 Years)

ABSTRACT

Breast cancer in young women (BCYW) is showing an increasing trend in incidence among women of India and other Asian countries compared to western countries. Methods: A retrospective study was carried out on total 579 patients treated between January 2010 and December 2017 to evaluate the clinico-epidemiological and pathological characteristics in BCYW. Cases were divided into two groups i.e the younger (<40 years) and the older (≥40 years) age group. Data were analyzed by chi square test using IBM SPSS version 21 for windows. P value less than 0.05 was considered significant. Results: The breast cancer in younger women (<40 years) was found in 20.2% of cases and was found to have greater proportion of unmarried women (p=0.002), higher frequency of nulliparity (p=0.006), greater incidence of bilateral breast cancer (p=0.017), greater incidence of multifocal or multicentric tumour (p=0.033), higher grade tumours (p=0.007), advanced T stage (p=0.003), advanced N stage (p=0.012) and overall advanced TNM stage (p=0.011) at diagnosis, higher frequency of lymphovascular invasion (p=0.00013), higher frequency of estrogen and progesterone receptor negativity (p=0.0005 and 0.0001 respectively). HER-2 expression rate was not found different between the two groups, whereas its expression rate was found significantly lower among women of age >50 years at diagnosis (p=0.001). Higher frequency of triple negative breast cancer was found in the younger age group (33.3% vs. 19.3%, p=0.001). Conclusions: Advanced stage presentation of BCYW warrants inclusion of younger age women in breast cancer screening and encouraging for breast self-examination.