living with metastatic breast cancer – cancer that has spread beyond the breast to distant sites in the body. That is up from roughly 105,000 in 1990.
Breast cancer experts said the figures are actually the first estimates of how many U.S. women are living with metastatic disease.
A number has been hard to come by, they said, because there is no national system that tracks cancer recurrences: Since U.S. women are typically diagnosed with earlier-stage breast cancer, most metastatic cases would – presumably – be in women who’d suffered a recurrence affecting distant sites in the body.
“That’s what we’ve assumed,” said Stephanie Reffey, senior director of evaluation and outcomes for Susan G. Komen, a nonprofit that supports breast cancer research.
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Why is it important to have actual numbers, or at least reliable estimates? For one, it can help drive more research, according to Reffey, who was not involved in the study.
By the researchers’ estimates, three-quarters of all women with
