Breast cancer in young women in Guatemala: A retrospective comparative cohort study.

Abstract

e13523 Background: In Guatemala, breast cancer is the most common malignancy among women, the socioeconomic variability among the population directly affects the access to screening and treatment, and little is known about the behavior of the disease among younger women, reason why the aim of our study is to describe the clinico-pathological characteristics in this population. Methods: Retrospective study performed of patients with a confirmed biopsy of breast cancer that were treated at Liga Nacional Contra el Cáncer - INCAN in Guatemala, the largest cancer center in the country. From medical records, we obtained: clinico-pathological and treatment (surgery, radiotherapy, endocrine therapy) data and compared results between ≤40 years and >40 years old women. Results: The study identified 1,347 patients, 190 (16.42%) ≤40 years old women and 1,157 (83.57%) >40 years old. The mean age at diagnosis among patients was 36 vs. 56 years old, respectively (p<0.01). According to our findings, even though most patients came from the region I of the country that is the capital city, there was a higher percentage of patients from the West regions (VI, VII) that belonged to the younger group 22.22% vs 10.58%. Furthermore, 74.4% of ≤40 years old patients were staged as locally advanced or metastatic vs >40 year old patients (48.04%), and 65.34% of ≤40 years old were found to have triple negative and Her2 enriched subtypes vs 46.13% in >40 years old (p<0.01). Conclusions: Young breast cancer patients in Guatemala are characterized by being diagnosed at locally advanced and advanced stages of the disease with more biologically aggressive subtypes such as triple negative and her2 enriched. [Table: see text]