Survival Analysis of Women with Breast Cancer under Adjuvant Therapy in South India

Abstract

While there has been much research in identifying risk factors and prognostic factor for breast cancer for breast cancer survival, the research specific to South Indian population is limited: Most of the association studies between breast cancer and risk factor have been widely studied in developed countries. This study attempts to explore the survival experience of breast cancer patients treated under adjuvant and neo-adjuvant therapy. The data were obtained from a Government Cancer Hospital, Tamil Nadu, South India and included 522 women diagnosed and treated with adjuvant and neo-adjuvant therapy between January2000 to December 2008 andfollow up to May 2010. The survival experiences under two treatments are presented using Kaplan-Meier survival curves. The important prognostic variables for response to treatment survival were identified using Cox regression with and without time-dependent covariates. Of the 522 cases, 248(47.5%) were of stage2 (A&B),249(47.7%) were of stage3 (A&B). About 90% received neo-adjuvant therapy. About 94% of the patients had response to treatment. The Cox model showed that apart from the chemotherapy, number of children, child birth status and stage3B and 4 turn out to be significant predictors for response to treatment survival. This is the first study to evaluate adjuvant therapy effects under hospital setup in South India. The results show that response to treatment survival is related poor in advanced stage patients under treatment.