Status of Breast Cancer in California
Breast cancer continues to rob women of their health, their productivity, and their very lives. It robs families of mothers, daughters, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, wives, and partners. In 1999 alone, an estimated 180,000 women in the U.S. were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, and more than 44,000 women were lost to this disease. In 1999 in California, approximately 20,000 women were diagnosed with breast cancer and nearly 4,500 women died of breast cancer.
What will happen to those 20,000 women who were diagnosed with breast cancer this year? While we do not yet have the data to answer this question, we can use what we know about patterns of breast cancer from recent years to make estimates.
20,000 Women Diagnosed in 1999
Of these 20,000 women:
- 2,000 women had Stage 0 disease, which is diagnosed almost exclusively through mammography.
- 7,800 women had Stage 1 disease; many of these were diagnosed through screening (that is; mammography and clinical breast exam).
- 7,200 women had Stage 2 disease, which is largely detectable without screening.
- 1,800 women had Stage 3 disease, and were not helped by screening.
- 1,200 women had Stage 4 disease, and were not helped by screening.
Thus, screening resulted in the diagnosis of 9,800 cases of breast cancer (nearly half of all breast cancer) at an early stage. The women with early stage cancer have a much better chance of surviving than women with more advanced cancer. But not all women with early stage cancer survive.
Of the 9,800 with early stage disease:
- 95% of the 2,000 women (1,900 women) diagnosed with Stage 0 breast cancer will be alive in 2009, but 100 women will have died of breast cancer during this 10-year period.
- 88% of the 7,800 women (6864 women) diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer will be alive in 2009, but 936 women will have died of breast cancer during this 10-year period.
Thus, if screening were responsible for all catching all of these cancers at an early stage, screening for one year in California would have saved 8,764 lives. But 1,036 women would have died of breast cancer despite the advantages of early detection.
Screening can be said to have not benefited more than 50% of women diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999, screening cannot be said to have benefited them, either because they did not receive screening, or because screening was not effective in detecting their disease at an early stage.
For these 10,200 women:
- 66% of the 7,200 women (4,752) diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer will be alive in 2009, but 2,448 women will have died of breast cancer during this 10-year period.
- 36% of the 1,800 women (648 women) diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer will be alive in 2009, but 1,152 women will have died of breast cancer during this 10-year period.
- 7% of the 1,200 women (84 women) diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer will be alive in 2009, but 1,116 women will have died of breast cancer during this 10-year period.
Thus, early detection (screening) failed to help more than 50% of the women diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999, either because they did not receive screening services or because their cancer had advanced beyond the earliest stages despite early detection. Of these 10,200, more than half (5,484) will still be alive in 2009 due to treatments that have been developed through research. But nearly half of these women (4716 women) will die in the next ten years, despite our best available treatments.
Overall, early detection coupled with early treatment saved the lives of 8,764 women in California in 1999, and treatment alone saved the lives of another 5,484 women. But despite the advances in early detection and treatment of breast cancer, 5,752 California women diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999 are destined to die in the next ten years.
Past research has helped us save the lives of 14,248 Californians in 1999. Our goal is to support research to save the lives of those with breast cancer in the future and to prevent the disease from occurring in future generations.
Sources:
California Cancer Facts and Figures, 1999
National Cancer Database
