Data suggest breast cancer mortality highest among older women

Jul 23, 2015 News

While breast cancer has been found to be the leading cancer that claims the life of older women, an appeal was recently made by Director of Chronic Disease within the Ministry of Public Health, Dr. Morris Edwards, for all women to immediately embrace self breast examination.
“Ladies start doing your ‘self examinations’ if you don’t (already), and every female that you know, ‘each one teach one, meet one’. Let’s promote the word – start doing the examination or they will be a part of the statistics,” Dr. Morris told a recent gathering consisting of several women.
Breast cancer has been found to not only be the most prevalent cancer among women but it is the overall leading cancer in Guyana.
According to Dr. Edwards, breast cancer accounted for almost 17 percent or 1,090 cases of the cancers that were diagnosed in the country over the period 2003 through 2012. This is based on data compiled by the Guyana Cancer Registry that were drawn from both public and private health facilities.
He was able to decipher from the data, which is now contained in the 2015 Cancer Surveillance Report, that the incidence and mortality rates were highest in women older than 65 years and peaked in those aged 70-74 years.
“So breast cancer in our setting is a disease of older women. Don’t wait until you are in your 60s to have your screening, your mammograms or whatever, do it before then because of the mortality rate; you diagnose and you die soon after,” informed Dr. Morris.
He also disclosed the fact that Afro-Guyanese women had the highest Cumulative Incidence Rate (CIR). This, according to Dr. Edwards, translated to almost 400 women per 100,000 population, being inflicted with the disease.
The data obtained through the Registry suggests that the vast majority of cases were recorded among women in Region Four, amounting to 46 percent of all cases. Thirteen percent of cases were recorded in Region Six and Region Ten percent in Region Three.
And according to Dr. Edwards the data that was analysed suggest that over the period under consideration there was an increasing trend for breast cancer which peaked in 2007 and thereafter started to reduce.
“This we need to find out why because we expect that the incidence of all the cancers should be going in the opposite direction and if we don’t have a prevention programme why is this actually happening? There may be some degree of under-reporting,” Dr. Edwards speculated.
His vocalised suspicion is that persons suspected to have the disease might have decided that “if I am not getting access to treatment why then bother go and be diagnosed, but I could be wrong.” He went on to regard as “unthinkable” the fact that 91 percent of the breast cancer cases were not staged.
Stage describes the extent of breast cancer and is one of the most important factors in determining prognosis and treatment options.
Addressing this, according to Dr. Edwards, could be as easy as physicians and other relevant health care workers doing a breast Fine Needle Aspiration (FNA). FNA is said to be a quick and simple procedure to perform which removes some fluid or cells from a lump, sore or swelling with a fine needle similar to a blood sample needle. But according to Dr. Edwards, “We don’t do that.”
Of the nine percent that were staged less than half were localised, close to a third had spread regionally and 10 percent were sort of distant said Dr. Edwards. He went on to inform, “44 percent of those that were staged received some form of treatment – 21 percent had surgery, 14 percent had chemotherapy, seven percent had radiotherapy and 1.2 percent had hormonal therapy.”

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Data suggest breast cancer mortality highest among older women

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