[Surgical treatment of breast cancer in elderly women--analysis of 244 patients].

From April 1964 to December 1981, 244 patients, women over 60 years old, with unilateral breast cancer were treated by surgery in our hospital. In this series, 15 patients (6.1%) had Stage I, 131 (53.6%) Stage II, 82 (33.6%) Stage III and 16 (6.6%) unstaged lesions. Of these patients, 3 were treated by extended radical mastectomy (ERM), 140 by standard radical mastectomy (SRM), 49 by modified radical mastectomy (MRM) and 52 by total mastectomy (TM). Except 52 cases by TM, axillary lymph node metastasis rate in 192 patients of this series was 49.3%. The 5- and 10-year survival rates were 33.3% in ERM group, 53.4% and 39.5% in SRM group, 70.8% and 48.5% in MRM group, and 73.4% and 55.3% in TM group, respectively. The overall 5-and 10-year survival rates were 62.1% and 45.6%. In Stage I, II patients, the 5-and 10-year survival rates of TM group were much higher than those of SRM and MRM groups (P less than 0.01), but in Stage III, the 5- and 10-year survival rates of MRM group were higher than those of other groups (P less than 0.05). Noticeably, the 5- and 10-year survival rates of SRM group in Stage I approximately III were not satisfactory. Our data show that the postoperative radiotherapy or chemotherapy was ineffective in elderly patients with breast cancer.