Breast cancer in young: experience at a tertiary care centre in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh

Background: Breast cancer occurring at an young age (40 years) is associated with aggressive behavior and worse prognosis compared to the older patients. Methods: We retrospectively studied the case records of young patients ( 40 years) with histopathologically confirmed breast cancer seen during the period June 2009 to December 2012 at our tertiary care teaching hospital. Clinical, histopathological features were analyzed and survival out comes were evaluated. Results: Out of the 520 patients with histopathological diagnosis of carcinoma breast, 100 patients were aged 40 years or below. Clinical stage III (54.8%) was the most common stage. Majority of tumours were grade 3 (43%) and triple negative (47.3%). Median follow up period was 42.8 months. Five-year median disease free survival was 30 months and overall survival was 40 months. On univariate analysis for overall survival (OS), tumour grade (p=0.004), stage (p=0.003), distant metastasis (p<0.001), perineural invasion (p=0.04) were significant. For disease free survival, tumour grade (p<0.001), lymphovascular invasion (p=0.04), perineural invasion (p=0.04) and recurrence (p<0.001) were significant. Conclusions: Breast cancer in the young is associated with higher stage and grade. Higher stage, grade, metastatic recurrence are associated with unfavourable outcome.