A retrospective comparative study of clinicopathological features between young and elderly women with breast cancer.

OBJECTIVE This is a retrospective study to compare the clinicopathological features between young and elderly women with breast cancer. METHODS Totally 181 young and 186 elderly breast cancer patients were analyzed and compared in respects of the histological subtype, tumor number and size, tumor location, histological grading, UICC-pTNM pathological staging, and lymph node metastasis status. RESULTS Our results showed that invasive ductal carcinoma was the most frequent histotype in young and elderly breast cancer patients. The second most frequent histological subtype was intraductal carcinoma in the young group, while the second leading histotype was invasive lobular carcinoma in the elderly group. No significant differences in tumor number and location were observed between the young and elderly groups. The percentage of patients with tumor size T3 (diameter > 5 cm) and the proportion of patients with histological grade III in the young group were significantly higher than the elderly group. For UICC-pTNM pathological staging, patients at stages 0-I and II in the young group were less than, while patients at stage III was more than, in the elderly group. In addition, the axillary lymph node metastasis rate and the numbers of axillary lymph node metastasis were elevated in the young group, compared with the elderly group. CONCLUSION Breast cancer in young female patients is associated with increased aggressiveness and potential malignancy. Our findings might contribute to future diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer in young women.