Breast Cancer Survival: Early Detection Still Key By Amy Norton

HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, Oct. 6, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Even with recent strides in breast cancer treatment, a woman's chances of surviving the disease still partly depend on early detection, a new study says.

The study of nearly 174,000 Dutch breast cancer patients found that survival rates improved between 1999 and 2012 -- and that included women with more advanced cancer.

Still, women's survival odds were best when their tumors were caught early, the researchers reported in the Oct. 6 issue of the medical journal BMJ.

"The general prospects for a woman diagnosed with breast cancer in the Western world are very good," said lead researcher Dr. Madeleine Tilanus-Linthorst, of Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands.

Her team found that among women diagnosed with breast cancer between 2006 and 2012, the five-year survival rate was 88 percent. That compared with 83 percent among women diagnosed with the cancer between 1999 and 2005, the study said.

The brighter outlook extended to women with more advanced cancer. Among those with larger tumors -- more than 2 inches across -- the research revealed that the five-year survival rate rose from 63 percent to 73 percent.

However, the smaller a woman's tumor at diagnosis, the better the outlook. Of women diagnosed in more recent years, nearly all survived at least five years if their tumor was caught when it was less than three-quarters of an inch across, the study found.

In fact, their five-year survival rates were comparable to those of an average woman their age who'd never been diagnosed with breast cancer, the study showed.

"Catching the cancer early is still highly important," Tilanus-Linthorst said.

Of the women diagnosed between 2006 and 2012, she noted, 65 percent had their tumors caught when they were still less than three-quarters of inch in size.

Dr. Harold Burstein cowrote an editorial published with the study. "The cancers caught these days are smaller and better-behaved when you look at them under a microscope," said Burstein, an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.

"And this study shows that even with the treatment advances of recent years, tumor size still matters," he said.