Associated Morbidity in Screened and Diagnosed Breast Cancer Patients: A Retrospective Study

Research Article

Austin J Obstet Gynecol. 2021; 8(6): 1187.

Associated Morbidity in Screened and Diagnosed Breast Cancer Patients: A Retrospective Study

Diane B-I, Birgit C and Serge R*

Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Isala Breast Unit and Prevention Centre, University Hospital Saint-Pierre (Université Libre de Bruxelles and Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Brussels, Belgium

*Corresponding author: Serge Rozenberg, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Isala Breast Unit and Prevention Centre, University Hospital Saint-Pierre (Université Libre de Bruxelles and Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Brussels, Belgium

Received: June 25, 2021; Accepted: July 09, 2021; Published: July 16, 2021

Abstract

Introduction: Breast Cancer (BC) screening has been associated with reduced mortality and morbidity. This study compares tumor characteristics and treatment morbidity in screened versus diagnosed women.

Materials and Methods: This retrospective study, conducted between 2010 and 2013, included 666 BC screened or diagnosed patients. We compared patients and tumors characteristics and received treatments. We also analyzed the results after excluding patients at risk of BC and conducted a multivariate analysis to assess odds ratios (OR).

Results: Screened women had smaller tumors (16.5 vs. 22.6 mm, p<0.001), of lower grade (p<0.001) with a lower Proliferation Index (PI) (p<0.001) than diagnosed women. Screened women were more frequently treated using conservative surgery (82.8% vs. 59.7%, p<0.001), needed less often axillary dissection (15.1% vs. 35.4%, p<0.001) and less often chemotherapy (20.8% vs. 48.3% p<0.001) than diagnosed women. In the multivariate analysis after adjustment for age and BC history, diagnosed women had increased (OR: 4.79, 95% IC: 3.19-7.18) risk to be administered chemotherapy and to undergo axillary dissection (OR: 4.18, 95% IC: 1.56-11.17) than screened women.

Conclusion: Patients should be informed about the benefits in terms of morbidity that screening confers to them.

Keywords: Breast cancer; Screening; Morbidity; Treatments

Introduction

While Breast Cancer (BC) remains the most frequent cancer in women, its mortality decreased in most high-income countries during the last decade [1]. This is generally attributed to treatment improvement and screening, resulting in earlier diagnosis and better prognosis, although the latter has been highly debated [2,3]. Indeed, while some studies estimated that organized screening contributes to a twenty percent reduction in BC mortality [4,5], others challenged these data and reported increased harm due to a 30-50 % BC overdiagnosis resulting from screening [6].

Both “true BC” and “over-diagnosed cancer” may be associated with considerable physical and psychological morbidity [7,8]. Nevertheless, screening is supposed to improve quality of life due to the early stage of the cancer and the associated less aggressive treatment than in symptomatically diagnosed cancers. This may theoretically be true, but has not often be studied [9]. In this retrospective analysis, we quantify the morbidity due to BC and its treatments in “Screened Women” (SW) as compared to that of symptomatic women, defined as “Clinically Diagnosed Women” (CDW). We further quantified the BC morbidity in diagnosed and screened women, after having excluded women at risk of breast cancer due to a family history.

Materials and Methods

Study design: retrospective cohort study

Patients selection: We analyzed systematically all the data of patients diagnosed with BC from January 2010 and December 2013 (n=669) in the C.H.U Saint-Pierre, a community and university hospital situated downtown Brussels, and treating a multicultural population.

Screened tumors were discovered by mammography in asymptomatic women who were invited to be screened by the Brussels region (“Mammotest program”) or were send by their physician for opportunistic screening. The uptake of organized screening is rather low in Brussels, (and this is in part due to the complex administrative bilingual situation of the Brussels district). That is why many women are still send by their physicians for opportunistic screening every two years (as for organized screening) or every year when they have a first-degree family history of breast cancer.

Screened women under 50 and over 69 years-old had opportunistic screening given the fact that organized screening does not apply to them, although more and more physicians and opinion leaders consider that there is a place for screening at those ages.

Clinically diagnosed tumors included symptoms such as feeling a mass, an axillary adenopathy, mammary discharge, pain, skin retraction, ulceration, pleural effusion or symptoms related to a metastasis. We excluded male patients and those fortuitously discovered (during breast reduction) (n=3).

We collected data about the date of BC detection, mode of detection and tumors characteristics. These data were collected systematically and are forwarded to the Belgian Cancer registry.

Tumors’ characteristics

We included stage, size, whether there was extensive disease (node and metastasis), the Elston-Ellis histopronostic grade (ranging from I to III), whether the tumor was in situ or invasive, lobular or ductal, the expression of estrogen and progesterone receptors, the proliferation index (classified as low when the Ki67<15% and high when Ki67>15%) and the presence of HER2 gene amplification.

Treatment characteristics: The following information about treatment was collected: type of surgery (lumpectomy, mastectomy, axillary lymph node dissection, removal of the sentinel node), radiotherapy, neo-adjuvant chemotherapy or chemotherapy postsurgery, use of hormone-therapy and immunotherapy.

Outcomes: In particular, we considered as surrogate markers of morbidity: having a mastectomy versus a lumpectomy, an axillary Lymph Node Dissection (LND) versus the removal of the sentinel node and undergoing chemotherapy or not.

Power analysis

We calculated that using a power of 80% (type II error) and type I error of 5% and hypothesizing a 50% reduction of needed chemotherapy (p (diagnosed) = 0.50 vs. p(screened)= 0.25; n=55), of mastectomy (p (diagnosed) = 0.4 vs. p(screened) =0.2, n=79) less than 100 patients were needed.

Statistical analyses

Groups were compared using Chi-squared test, Fisher’s exact test for small numbers and t tests. The first analysis compared tumors’ characteristics and treatments between all screened and clinically diagnosed women (Table 1). Characteristics were expressed in mean + standard deviation or median (IQR) when there were continuous and in percentage when they were categorical. In order to reduce the risk of bias, we conducted a second analysis, excluding women with relevant BC risk factors (such as personal and/or 1st, 2nd or 3rd degree family BC history, or genetic BC predisposition) and stratified these analyses by age classes (40-49, 50-69 and 70-75 years old) (Figure 1).