The majority of women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer will become long-term cancer survivors, a study has found.
Researchers used the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service to study data from 512,447 English women between 1993 and 2015.
Findings showed the average risk of dying from breast cancer in the five years after diagnosis has decreased from 14% to just 5%. Of those women diagnosed between 2010 and 2015, 62.8% had 3% or less risk of death.
However, researchers found different characteristics created a varied mortality risk.
For diagnoses between 2010 and 2015, characteristics such as age, how the cancer was detected, grade, and number of affected lymph nodes changed the risk of mortality. Accounting for these factors meant 4.6% of women diagnosed during this time had a mortality risk of more than 20%.
The researchers explained that their study ‘[provides] patients with early breast cancer, and the clinicians who treat them, with estimates of their likely prognosis based on up-to-date data.’
Writing in their conclusion they said: ‘the prognosis for women with early invasive breast cancer has improved substantially since the 1990s.’
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