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Breast cancer in women younger than 35 years old

  • Gynecologic Oncology
  • Published:
Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

Women ≤ 35 years old with breast cancer constitute a special group. Considering the impact of the disease and its prognosis, these patients face some specific problems that are not present in older women. What are the prognostic features of the survival rate in very young women with breast cancer?

Methods

Retrospective analysis of very young women with breast cancer from the Surgical-Oncologic Breast Cancer Department at “Theagenio” Anticancer Hospital, 2003–2016. Patient and tumor characteristics, treatment options and follow-up information were collected. Univariate–multivariate analyses were conducted and survival rates were calculated.

Results

The median age was 34 years old. 53 patients (41%) had T1, 36 (28%) had T2, 7 (5.4%) had T3 and 33 (25.6%) had T4 stage tumors. Most women, 114 (88.4%), had ductal carcinoma in their histology. Furthermore, positive axillary lymph nodes were present in 62 women (48%). In the immunochemistry report, 91 patients (70.5%) were hormone receptor positive, HER2 was overexpressed in 32 patients (24.8%) and 27 patients presented with triple-negative subtype. Out of 65 patients tested for Ki-67, 51 (78.5%), had a high expression (cut-off value of 20%). After adjusting for all possible factors, the risk of recurrence and death was six times higher in the positive lymph node group, (p < 0.001). The median disease-free and overall survival was 133 and > 173 months, respectively.

Conclusion

Breast cancer in very young women appears with large size and high-grade tumors, high incidence of infiltrated axillary lymph nodes, high Ki-67 expression and intrinsic subtypes with poor prognosis. As a result, these women need to be treated by a multidisciplinary team.

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Funding

No funding for this study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Surgical-Oncologic Breast Cancer Department, “Theagenio” Anticancer Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Dimitrios Zouzoulas & Georgios Sympilidis

  2. 1st Department of Obstetrics – Gynecology Clinic, AUTh, “Papageorgiou” Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Dimitrios Zouzoulas, Dimitrios Tsolakidis, Dimitrios G. Goulis & Grigorios Grimbizis

  3. 3rd Department of Clinical Oncology, “Thegeneio” Anticancer Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece

    George Douganiotis

  4. Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, University Hospital Schleswig Holstein, Campus Luebeck, Luebeck, Germany

    Georgios Gitas

  5. ATEITh, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Menelaos Zafrakas

Authors
  1. Dimitrios Zouzoulas
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  2. Dimitrios Tsolakidis
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  3. Georgios Gitas
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  4. Menelaos Zafrakas
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  5. Dimitrios G. Goulis
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  6. George Douganiotis
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  7. Georgios Sympilidis
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  8. Grigorios Grimbizis
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Contributions

DZ: Writing—original draft preparation, Data collection, Data analysis. DT: Conceptualization, Writing—review and editing. GG: Methodology, Software. MZ: Methodology, Writing—review and editing. DG. G: Supervision, Writing—review and editing. GD: Data collection. GS: Resources. GG: Validation, Supervision.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dimitrios Zouzoulas.

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All data are available in Excel file.

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RStudio free software was used.

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Zouzoulas, D., Tsolakidis, D., Gitas, G. et al. Breast cancer in women younger than 35 years old. Arch Gynecol Obstet 302, 721–730 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-020-05695-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-020-05695-z

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