title: Personal or first-degree family breast cancer history: which has higher impact on tumor detection and tumor size in breast cancer.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  A woman's risk of developing breast cancer (BC) is increased if she has a personal history (PH) or family history (FH) of the disease. We compared the impact of the two risk factors PH and FH on tumor detection and tumor size at diagnosis in a cohort of BC patients.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study cohort comprised 1,037 invasive BC patients (≤70 years at diagnosis). From these, 92 patients (8.5%) had a positive PH and 151 patients (13.7%) had a positive first-degree FH.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Compared to the tumors of patients without PH or FH, the lesions of patients who had a positive PH or a positive FH were more often found by radiologic breast examinations (RBE) (PH: 49.4%, FH: 43.4%, no PH/FH: 26.2%; both comparisons p < 0.001). In patients with a positive FH, the tumors were slightly less often found by RBE as in patients with a positive PH (p = 0.468). Patients with a positive PH or FH had smaller tumors compared with those without such a history (PH: 19.7 mm, FH: 19.6 mm, no PH/FH: 26.7 mm; p = 0.015/p < 0.001). The tumor sizes of patients with a positive PH were almost identical to those of patients with a positive FH (p = 0.999).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In women with a positive FH or PH of BC, the increased awareness of BC risk led to the detection of smaller tumors compared to women who have not had this experience. However, comparison of the two risk factors showed that they had a similar impact on the RBE detection rate of BC lesions and that the tumor sizes were nearly identical.
authors.affiliation: Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, University Hospital Basel (UHB), Spitalstrasse 21, 4031, Basel, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Fabienne Dominique
authors.initials: FD
authors.lastname: Schwab
authors.forename: Nerbil
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kilic
authors.forename: Dorothy Jane
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Seraina Margaretha
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Schmid
authors.forename: Marcus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vetter
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Schötzau
authors.forename: Uwe
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Güth
mesh_terms: D001940:Breast / Q000473:pathology*; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000473:pathology*; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005192:Family Health; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D012307:Risk Factors