Age, Grade, Stage Predicted Receipt of Adjuvant Chemotherapy in Elderly Patients With Breast Cancer

Researchers identified several factors associated with an increased likelihood of elderly patients with early-stage breast cancer receiving adjuvant chemotherapy, including age younger than 80, grade and stage of disease, and hormone receptor status.

Results from the study, presented at the 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in Texas, also revealed an overall survival benefit associated with the receipt of adjuvant chemotherapy in all subgroups analyzed across a population of patients aged 65 years or older.

According to the study abstract, although the use of adjuvant therapy is established for early-stage breast cancer, many of the trials that established its use included only a minority of women who were aged older than 65 years.

In this National Cancer Database analysis, the researchers looked at data from more than 2.4 million women older than 65 years with stage I to stage III breast cancer between the period of 2004 to 2015. Of these women, 160,676 met inclusion criteria, including 21,743 who were older than 80.

Factors found to predict the use of adjuvant chemotherapy included disease histology (P < .0001) and grade (P < .0001). Women aged 65 to 80 years were significantly more likely to receive adjuvant chemotherapy compared with women aged older than 80 years (P < .0001). Other factors included race (P < .0001), Charlson/Deyo comorbidity condition score (P < .0001), receipt of radiation therapy (P < .0001), type of surgery (P < .0001), stage of disease (P < .0001), and estrogen receptor (ER)/progesterone receptor (PR) status (P < .0001).

Additionally, the researchers reported an overall survival benefit for patients who received adjuvant chemotherapy regardless of age, ER, PR, HER2 status or stage of disease.

Read more of Cancer Therapy Advisor‘s coverage of the SABCS 2018 meeting by visiting the conference page.

Reference

1. Sinha S, Panebianco L, Wu X, et al. Efficacy and utilization trends of adjuvant chemotherapy for stage I, II, and III breast cancer in the elderly population: A National Cancer Database (NCDB) analysis. Presented at: 2018 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; December 3-8, 2018; San Antonio, Texas. Abstract GS2-02.