RESUMO
OBJECTIVES: The survival rate of cancer patients has exceeded 60%. Although cancer survivors may die of other diseases except cancer, the health management system including chronic disease prevention-management for cancer survivors, has not been established in the diverse aspects. Therefore, services according to care pathway of cancer patients need to be provided through a support system based on a platform concept that can be used to meet patient needs in various ways. METHODS: A sample cohort database (2002-2010) of approximately 1 million persons-2% of the whole nation (50 million)-was used to estimate cancer survivors through a principal care pathway for cancer management. The sample cohort database was built to estimate the number of breast cancer survivors in the five stage: 'Diagnosis and treatment,' 'Supportive care,' 'Monitoring,' 'Progress illness,' and 'Hospice care'. In this way, the scale of breast cancer survivors was estimated. RESULTS: There were 330 (9.8%) cases of the incidence of cancer in 2010 in the 'Diagnosis and treatment.' Among the cases of the incidence of cancer in the previous year, the number of one-year survivors was 328 (9.7%); these were included in the category 'Supportive care.' In the 'Monitoring' category, 2,593 (76.9%) who maintained health lives were included. A total of 84 (2.5%) survivors were checked to identify an ongoing disease; these were included in the category 'Progress illness.' In the category 'Hospice care,' 36 (1.1%) end-stage cancer patients requiring hospice care were included. CONCLUSIONS: We established a care pathway by survival stage in order to fulfill prevention and health management services post-treatment management steps.
RESUMO
Patients with node-positive breast cancer are currently classified according to pN stage. Lymph node ratio (LNR), the ratio of positive to total removed lymph nodes, maybe a more useful prognostic factor in these patients. We therefore compared LNR and pN staging as prognostic factors in patients with node-positive breast cancer. Using two large prospective databases of the Korean Breast Cancer Registry (KBCR) and the Asan Medical Center (AMC) Breast Cancer Center of patients with LN-positive breast cancer from 1988 to 2005, we compared the ability of LNR and pN stage to predict patient survival by Cox regression analysis in the overall patient cohort and in subgroups categorized by age and intrinsic subtype. Patients were categorized into low- (≤ 0.20), intermediate- (>0.20 and ≤ 0.65), and high-risk (>0.65) LNR groups. The difference in mortality risk was greater among LNR groups than among patients staged pN1, pN2, and pN3, as assessed by disease-free survival (DFS), cancer-specific survival (CSS), and overall survival (OS) rates. In contrast to LNR risk categories, the survival curves for pN1 and pN2 stage patients overlapped in those aged <35 years and those with her2/neu-enriched or triple-negative tumors. These findings were validated by analyzing a nationwide registry of 15,488 node-positive patients, which showed that patients with pN1 and intermediate LNR risk had poorer DFS (HR 1.7, 95% CI 1.4-2.2) and CSS (HR 1.6, 95% CI 1.1-2.2) than patients with pN2 and low LNR risk. LNR is a better predictor of prognosis than pN stage in women with breast cancer, especially in high-risk patients, including younger women and women with her2/neu-enriched or triple-negative tumors. Treatment decisions should be based on LNR rather than on pN stage.
