Do very young Korean breast cancer patients have worse outcomes?

BACKGROUND

In general, Korean women with breast cancer are younger than white women. We have compared the clinicopathologic characteristics and prognosis in very young and less young premenopausal Korean women with breast cancer.

METHODS

Of the breast cancer patients treated at the Asan Medical Center in Seoul, Korea, from 1989 to 2002, 381 (9.6%) were younger than 35 years of age (the "very young" group) and 2320 were 35 to 50 years of age (the "less young" group). We retrospectively compared the clinicopathologic factors and survival rates of these two groups.

RESULTS

The very young group with lymph node metastases had poorer 5-year survival (69.9% vs. 82.7%, P = .0063) and disease-free survival (58.1% vs. 74.1%, P < .0001) rates than their older counterparts. In addition, the very young group had more advanced-stage disease (P = .001), higher T stage (P = .001), and more positive lymph nodes (P = .024) than did their older counterparts, as well as higher percentages of estrogen receptor-negative disease (48.2% vs. 42.1%, P = .047), progesterone receptor-negative disease (53.5% vs. 44.1%, P = .002), and grade 3 histology (52.1% vs. 43.5%, P = .011) tumors.

CONCLUSIONS

Compared with older premenopausal Korean women with breast cancer, those younger than 35 years old had a poorer prognosis as a result of a higher rate of recurrence, a later stage at diagnosis, and more aggressive disease. Thus, in Korean breast cancer patients, age younger than 35 years was an independent predictor of recurrence.