Management of Breast Cancer in Old Age

Abstract

In a retrospective survey of 301 women aged over 70 with breast cancer the factors affecting five–year survival are evaluated. The local disease is more advanced when the patient presents with it in old age than in younger women, possibly associated with a lesser degree of awareness or a long history of the primary tumour. It is not associated with a different average rate of tumour growth in old age, as measured by scar recurrences after surgery. Radical surgery may be followed by a high five–year survival rate in patients carefully selected on medical grounds, but in this unselected series the five–year survival rate was practically the same whether the local disease was limited or extensive at presentation and whatever the treatment given. The probability of five–year survival in a woman over 70 with breast cancer will depend mainly on her general health. © 1970, British Medical Journal Publishing Group. All rights reserved.