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NEW YORK, Mar 29 (Reuters Health) - Statistics commonly used to describe a woman's lifetime risk of developing breast cancer may be misleading, causing women to feel unnecessarily anxious, according to a report. Instead, shorter-term projections broken down by race and age may be more valuable, researchers suggest.
For instance, many groups have reported that a woman's lifetime risk of developing breast cancer is 1 in 9, but how relevant is this statistic to an individual woman's life?
"Lifetime risk is the likelihood that a newborn girl will develop breast cancer sometime during her entire life. The 1-in-9 statistic does not apply to women of all ages," lead author Dr. Cyllene R. Morris of the Public Health Institute's California Cancer Registry in Sacramento, said in a prepared statement.
In an effort to clear up the confusion, the study authors estimated the risk of developing breast cancer within the next 5, 10 or 20 years for women currently aged 30 to 70 years in four major ethnic groups--Asian/Pacific Islanders, Hispanic, African American and Caucasian.
The researchers note that they made their calculations based on California statewide data. Their findings are published in the April issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
Morris and colleagues found that a 30-year-old woman has a 2% (1 in 50) chance of being diagnosed with breast cancer in the next 20 years, while a 40-year-old has a 4.5% (1 in 20) chance.
The investigators also found that a 50-year-old woman's risk of developing invasive breast cancer--the most serious kind--in the next 5 to 20 years ranged anywhere from 1 in 15 to 1 in 133, depending on her ethnicity.
"For women currently aged 50, the estimated risk of developing invasive breast cancer within 5 years varied from 0.8% (1 in 133) among Hispanics to 1.3% (1 in 75) among Caucasians," the authors note.
"Within 20 years, estimated risks increased to 6.6% (1 in 15) among Caucasians, 5% (1 in 20) among African Americans, 3.9% (1 in 26) among Asian/Pacific Islanders, and 3.7% (1 in 27) among Hispanics," the report indicates.
"Based on these estimates, the...risk of developing breast cancer in the next 1 or 2 decades of life may be considerably lower than the risk perceived by most women," Morris and colleagues conclude.
SOURCE: American Journal of Preventative Medicine 2001;20.
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