Survival patterns in hormone treated advanced breast cancer.

This study investigates a series of factors, all recordable by the time of presentation of distant metastases from primary breast cancer and relates these to survival after the initiation of endocrine therapies. One hundred and ninety-one patients have received endocrine therapy as initial treatment for distant metastases. In all patients both the histological grade and oestrogen receptor (ER) status of primary tumour tissue; the lymph node stage and menopausal status at mastectomy and the disease-free interval and sites of initial metastases are available for analysis. Four of these factors have been found to contribute independently towards prolonged survival after the initiation of treatment: tumour grade, ER status, disease-free interval and sites of metastases. Employing a multivariate analysis incorporating these four factors, three groups of patients have been identified with survivals of 67, 37 and 0 per cent at 18 months on therapy. These three groups of patients contain 37, 41 and 22 per cent of the patient population respectively.