Patterns of recurrence and relapse--Anglo-Japanese comparative study.

A prospective study was undertaken to compare the recurrent sites of breast cancer patients in Japan and the UK. The number of patients collected between April 1979 and August 1980 were 205 in the UK and 199 in Japan, of which those who had recurrence were 89 and 49 respectively. A comparison of the distribution of the first recurrence sites demonstrated that the Japanese patients had significantly higher rates of local recurrence in the supraclavicular fossa and distant metastasis to the lung than UK patients. When comparing the distribution of all recurrent sites seen in the study, Japanese patients showed a significantly higher incidence of metastasis to the supraclavicular fossa and the lung while the UK patients showed a significantly higher incidence of skin metastasis. Bone metastases were observed more often in Japanese patients and liver metastases in UK patients, but neither of the differences were statistically significant.