tracks new cancer diagnoses and deaths. It lacks information on women’s survival after a breast cancer recurrence.
Why Survival Rate Has Improved
Mariotto could not say exactly why survival has improved. But there were treatment advances during the study period, she noted: The drug Herceptin, for example, was approved in 1998 for treating some cases of metastatic breast cancer. It is one of a group of “targeted” drugs that zeroes in on specific abnormalities in cancer cells.
“We do have some evidence that progress is being made,” Reffey said. But, she added, “these women are still not living long – so it’s not great news.”
The hope, according to Reffey, is to help women with metastatic breast cancer not only live longer – but also have a good quality of life.
“We’d like to see it become more of a livable, chronic disease,” Reffey said.
Some women, she noted, do live for years with metastatic breast cancer. Of women younger than 65 in this study, 11 percent of those diagnosed between 2000 and 2004 were still alive a decade or more later. Those women, Reffey said, show that long-term survival is possible.
Although there may be racial disparities in breast cancer diagnosis, treatment, and survival rate when it comes to African American women, there still is hope. Gaining knowledge about your diagnosis is detrimental in the decision-making for your treatment options and solutions. For more information on advanced breast cancer visit our breast cancer section on BlackDoctor.org.
SOURCES:
NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov, Racial disparities in the development of breast cancer metastases among older women: A multi-level study, Feb. 15, 2009
NationalBreastCancer.org, What is Metastatic Breast Cancer? (Jan. 9, 2018)
Angela Mariotto, Ph.D., chief, data analytics branch, surveillance research program, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, U.S. National Cancer Institute; Stephanie Reffey, Ph.D., senior director, evaluation and outcomes, Susan G. Komen, Dallas; May 18, 2017, Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, online