Summary
Retrospective analysis was made of 3,918 cases of breast cancer seen during 1954–1964. Median survival was 4.5 years and 30% of patients survived through a 10-year period. For stages I, II, and III patients, the mortality increased during 1–4 years after diagnosis and then slowly declined. Beyond 15 years, stage III patients assumed the same mortality (5%) as those with lesser disease; 58% excess of deaths from all causes after 15–20 years showed that breast cancer was not curable within 20 years but ultimately, taking account of clinical status, 51% of 5-year survivors with stages I-III disease are cured.
We are grateful to colleagues, past and present, and to the Department of Radiotherapy, Edinburgh, for access to case records, the high quality of which made this study possible. We wish to thank Mr. W. Lutz, Medical Computing and Statistics Unit, Edinburgh, for making our collaboration possible.
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© 1982 Springer-Verlag Berlin · Heidelberg
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Gore, S., Langlands, A., Pocock, S., Kerr, G. (1982). Natural History of Breast Cancer. In: Mathé, G., Bonadonna, G., Salmon, S. (eds) Adjuvant Therapies of Cancer. Recent Results in Cancer Research, vol 80. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-81685-7_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-81685-7_23
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