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Oestrogen receptors revisited: long‐term follow up of over five thousand breast cancer patients
Author(s) -
Hähnel Roland,
Spilsbury Katrina
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
anz journal of surgery
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.426
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1445-2197
pISSN - 1445-1433
DOI - 10.1111/j.1445-1433.2004.03215.x
Subject(s) - medicine , oestrogen receptor , breast cancer , oncology , proportional hazards model , hazard ratio , receptor , progesterone receptor , survival analysis , mammary gland , cancer , gynecology , hormone receptor , estrogen receptor , confidence interval
Background: The oestrogen receptor status of a breast tumour predicts the response to hormonal treatment and is an important prognostic marker; women with oestrogen receptor positive tumours having a better short‐term survival outcome. Methods: Kaplan−Meier estimates and Cox proportional hazard model were used to estimate the association between oestrogen receptor levels and long‐term breast cancer‐specific survival outcomes in 5735 women diagnosed with breast carcinoma from 1970 to 1997 in Western Australia. Further analysis was performed on a subset of women for whom biochemical and tumour characteristics were also available. Results: Five‐year breast cancer‐specific survival estimates for women with oestrogen receptor positive tumours was 0.85 (95% CI 0.84−86) compared to 0.72 (95% CI 0.70−74) for women with oestrogen receptor negative tumours. The relative survival advantage of an oestrogen positive tumour over oestrogen negative tumours disappeared by the fourth year (0.8, 95% CI 0.6−1.0). Conditional upon surviving 5 years, long‐term breast cancer‐specific survival was better for women with oestrogen receptor and progesterone receptor negative tumours compared to other women (log rank test P‐value <0.05). Conclusion: Despite an earlier survival advantage for women diagnosed with oestrogen receptor positive tumours, after 5 years of survival, women with oestrogen receptor negative and progesterone receptor negative tumours had better long‐term survival outcomes from breast cancer compared to other women.