Purpose : Due to improving breast cancer screening programs and treatment methods, we can expect improved long-term survival of breast cancer patients. Given the longer survival times, other primary cancers may develop in other organs of
breast
cancer patients during their long term follow up period. Our purpose was to elucidate the clinical characteristics of multiple primary cancers developed in breast cancer patients.
Methods : We retrospectively investigated 28 patients with multiple primary cancers including breast cancer. However, we excluded contra-lateral breast cancer. We investigated the patients’ clinical characteristics including mean age,
stage,
hormone receptor status, cause of death, time interval between the breast cancer and other cancers, and common cancers which were combined with breast cancer.
Result : The mean age of the study group was 53±2, higher than the 47.7±0.4 of our hospital breast cancer patients group. However, other tumor characteristics were not significantly different from other general breast cancer patients.
Among the
patients 5 were synchronous and 23 were metachronous MPC. The most common cancer combined with breast cancer was gastric cancer (8, 27.6%), followed by cervical cancer (3, 10.7%) and colon cancer (3, 10.7%). The ranks of the other cancer
co-occurred
with breast cancer were not significantly different than the Korean 1999 Korean women’s cancer incidence ranks excluding breast cancer.
Conclusion : Due to the increasing length of the follow up period for breast cancer patients, primary cancers may develop in other organs. Therefore, physicians should be concerned and increase efforts to detect these other cancers early
in
these
patients. Additionally, it appears that the prevalence ranking of common cancers developing in breast cancer patients is not significantly different than the ranking of other cancer incidence in the general population.
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