An audit of over 1000 breast cancer patients from a tertiary care center of Northern India

BACKGROUND Breast cancer is the commonest cancer among women. India along with United States and China collectively account for one third of the global burden. The present study reports the clinico-epidemiological data of our patient population. This may help in better understanding of the disease in our population and also form ground for conducting further breast cancer research in India. METHODS The study was conducted at an apex teaching and medical research institution in India from September 2013 to April 2015 as a retrospective review of prospectively collected data of breast cancer patients. The socio-demographic characteristics, reproductive risk factors, clinical presentation, TNM staging and histopathological characteristics for breast cancer in these patients were recorded. The data was recorded on an Xcel spreadsheet and analyzed using IBM SPSS 21. RESULTS The study comprised of 1310 breast cancer patients with males comprising 1.1%. The median age of presentation was 47 years, and menarche 14 years. Most of women were married and multiparous. More than half of the women were postmenopausal at presentation. All patients were symptomatic at presentation with median duration of symptom of 5 months and median lump size of 5 cm. Most common stage at presentation was Stage II and most common histopathology was Invasive ductal carcinoma. 61.9% tumors were hormone receptor positive. Triple negative cancers formed one third of all tumors. CONCLUSION Breast cancer in the Indian scenario is a disease of younger woman who lack the characteristic reproductive and demographic risk factors. This calls for a need to study the clinico-demographic risk factors and characteristics of our own population.