13P - Breast cancer distribution in East Azerbaijan, Iran: Results of population-based cancer registry

Background

Breast cancer (BC) is the third most common cancer in the world and is the most common cancer in Iran in both sexes. Worldwide, there will be about 2.1 million newly diagnosed female breast cancer cases in 2018, accounting for almost 1 in 4 cancer cases among women. The aim of this study was to provide recent data on the BC incidence and distribution in East Azerbaijan, Iran.

Methods

East Azerbaijan is the largest and most populous province in the northwest of Iran, which more than 95% of the population is of Azeri ethnicity. Data of the patients diagnosed with confirmed BC as registered in the East Azerbaijan population based cancer registry between 2015 and 2017, were linked to the main data sources. The age standardized incidence rates (ASIRs) for BC were estimated.

Results

We had overall 1410 primary breast cancer cases during two years, in both sexes, which accounted 10.3% of cancer cases. The mean age of our patients was 51.07(±13.29), with the age range of 21 to 99 years old. About 98.2% of BC was female, and 1.7% of them were male. The most common morphology was ductal carcinoma (n = 1077, 76.4%), and most of our BC patient were in grade II of disease (35.9%). In 31.2% of patients had lymphatic Invasion, 17.8 % vascular invasion, and 8.7% of them had neural invasion. Also, our results showed that breast cancer was the most common cancer among female, with slightly increasing of ASRs from 31.1 to 31.7 per 100,000 women during 2 years. There were two age peaks of ASRs in women, first in approximately 45-55 years and second in 60-70 years old groups.

Conclusions

We observed slightly increase in incidence of BC, which might be explained by the improvement of compliance to the cancer registration, compared with previous reports of our region. However, the low tumor stages and improved knowledge and attitude of women to early diagnosis and screening, which we have recently addressed in our ongoing screening programs in the province, may have played important roles in these results.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

The authors.

Funding

Has not received any funding.

Disclosure

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.