Impact of patients’ refusal to undergo adjuvant treatment measures on survival

Purpose Breast cancer patients receive treatment recommendations from multidisciplinary tumour boards. To determine the consequences of patients’ refusal of such recommendations, we analysed the database of the Centre for Breast Cancer at the Ortenau Clinic in Offenburg, Germany. Methods A total of 4315 patients with non-metastatic primary breast cancer, treated between 1997 and 2019, were analysed with descriptive analyses, Kaplan–Meier survival analyses, and Cox regression analyses regarding the effects of their refusal. Results About 10.7% of the patients rejected the treatment advice. These were significantly elderly ( F = 74.4; p