title: Survival of breast-cancer patients and body size indicators.
abstract: The association of breast-cancer survival with various risk factors was investigated using data of 213 breast-cancer patients who underwent surgical operation between 1975 and 1978. They were followed-up until 1987, and a total of 64 deaths including 47 breast-cancer deaths were certified. The 5-year and 10-year relative survival rates were 78.5% and 75.3% respectively. Of the various factors investigated, some anthropometric indicators revealed interesting results; i.e., body weight, Quetelet index, and body surface area at the time of operation turned out to be strong predictors of survival with a statistically significant trend towards lower survival with larger body structure even after adjustment for confounding factors (e.g., clinical stage) using a proportional-hazard model. The estimated survival probability for women with Quetelet index of 20 was about 12% higher than that with Quetelet index of 24 over a 10-year or more follow-up period. Other variables exhibiting prognostic importance were clinical stage, TNM classification, and some histological findings, while height and reproductive life indicators were, as a rule, not significantly related to survival.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health, School of Medicine, Kyushu University, Fukuoka City, Japan.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kyogoku
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hirohata
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Takeshita
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Nomura
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Shigematsu
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Horie
mesh_terms: D001827:Body Height / Q000502:physiology; D001830:Body Surface Area; D001835:Body Weight / Q000502:physiology*; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000150:complications / Q000401:mortality*; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008207:Lymphatic Metastasis; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D009765:Obesity / Q000150:complications*; D011379:Prognosis; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models