Familial Breast Cancer

ABSTRACT

Familial or hereditary breast cancer has genetic heterogeneity and is transmitted vertically in an autosomal dominant fashion. About 5 to 10% of breast cancers are caused by the inheritance of mutations in dominant susceptibility genes. We retrospectively reviewed 50 breast cancer patients from 44 families. These patients had treated their breast cancer at the Department of Surgery, Yonsei University College of Medicine, from 1981 to 1996. There were no statistically significant differences between the familial breast cancers and the sporadic breast cancers in such clinicopathologic characteristics as major complaint, tumor location, tumor size, metastasis to axillary lymph nodes, stage distribution, histology distribution and hormone receptor status. For familial camcers, the mean survival was 125 months, the overal 5-year survival rate was 85%, and the overall 5-year disease-free survival rate was 70%.