Age as a risk factor for breast cancer-related lymphedema: a systematic review.

PURPOSE

Breast cancer-related lymphedema (BCRL) has been widely reported in the medical literature. Various patient characteristics, including age, have been investigated as possible risk factors for this disease entity, but the existence and direction of the cause-and-effect relationship are still unclear. In this review, we aimed to evaluate the effect of age on development of BRCL.

METHODS

PubMed, Scopus, and Ovid MEDLINE were searched for relevant articles, which were found to be published between 1974 and 2020.

RESULTS

Twenty-six studies involving 19,396 patients were selected. The average age of patients was 54.9. 26 studies were included in the final analysis, and 13 articles reported no association between age and BCRL development.

CONCLUSIONS

Though studies presented different findings, the majority did not identify age as a risk factor for development of lymphedema. However, the level of evidence of individual studies was low. In this article, we call attention to the need for uniform design of lymphedema studies and diagnosis.

IMPLICATIONS FOR CANCER SURVIVORS

All patients should be informed and screened regularly for lymphedema during and after the treatment independent of their age.