Survival outcomes associated with chemotherapy treatment in a cohort of women with breast cancer in Southern India.

Augustine, Daisy; Nagappa, Anantha Naik; Udupa, N.; Vadiraja, B. M.; Balkrishnan, Rajesh

The objective of this study was to explore the outcomes associated with pharmacological management of breast cancer in a tertiary care hospital in Udupi district of South Karnataka, India. An interview cum survey approach was used to collect the data. Patient age varied from 25-73 years, (mean age 47.23, SD=9.7).Out of 303 women, 53% were premenopausal and the rest of them were post-menopausal. Hormone responsiveness of tumors was found to be 57% as ER +ve. Among the subjects 81.5% were treated with chemotherapy by different drug regimens. All the ER/PR+ve cases were prescribed with tamoxifen /aromatase inhibitors for 5 years after the preliminary treatments, according to the menopausal status. The symptom free survival was estimated for each regimen by Kaplan Meir Survival analysis. The survival curve for regimen I (Adriamycin and cyclophosphamide) was 11.01yrs, for regimen II (5 Fluorouracil, adriamycin and cyclophosphamide) was 2.52 years and for regimen III (Adriamycin, cyclophosphamide and taxol) was 1.10 years. Cox proportional hazards model regression results confirmed statistically significant correlations between survival and adherence to treatment and stage of cancer at the time of diagnosis as survival predictors (Hazards Ratio=6.77, 95% CI=3.15-14.55, p=<0.001, and Hazards Ratio=0.10, 95% CI=0.05-0.22, P<0.001 respectively for adherence and stage).

BREAST cancer chemotherapy; CANCER chemotherapy; CANCER treatment; CANCER patients; CANCER in women; INDIAN women (Asians)

GSTF Journal of BioSciences, 2012, Vol 2, Issue 1, p1

2251-3140

Academic Journal

10.5176/2251-3140_2.1.15