Survival in breast cancer: A population‐based study in Bangalore, India

Survival from cancer reflects the aggressiveness of the disease, the effectiveness of treatment and host factors such as age. While hospital‐based survival rates are typically used to evaluate the care provided in a particular hospital, population‐based survival reflects the effectiveness of the overall cancer control strategy in the region. Here, we report the survival experience of 1514 breast cancer patients registered by the Bangalore population‐based registry during 1982‐1989. There have been very few reports on survival from cancer in India, mainly because of poor patient follow‐up and inadequate system of registration of death. This has been largely overcome in this study by means of active follow‐up through visits of homes of patients. Scrutiny of medical records and matching with death certificates, was also carried out in a small proportion (12%) of cases. Thus, information on vital status (whether dead or alive) as on January 1, 1993 was available for 1334 (88%) subjects and partial follow up data were available for a further 34 (2%). The observed 5 year survival was 42.3% and the corresponding relative survival was 46.8%. The observed survival was 57.4% for localized disease, 45.8% for direct extension, 37% for those with regional node involvement, 14.2% for distant metastasis and 38.3% for those with unstaged disease. The clinical extent of disease and the educational status were independent predictors of survival.