Baseline characteristics of women presenting with breast cancer at the Radiotherapy Unit of Victoria Hospital, Mauritius

Abstract

Breast cancer is considered to be the most frequently occurring cancer in females worldwide. The aims of the study were to analyze the various clinical presentations of breast cancer at a cancer referral centre in Mauritius with respect to patient characteristics and tumour characteristics and to explore the  association of breast cancer and some possible risk factors namely smoking, family history and oral  contraception. Fifty-one confirmed female breast cancer patients were reviewed. Of these, 30 were  post-menopausal and 21 were pre-menopausal. The mean and median ages at presentation were  respectively 49.4 and 50.0 years respectively. Most patients presented with a painless lump (76.5%).  The mean delay in seeking medical advice was 2.4 months. Most patients presented with T2 tumours  (56.9%) followed by 13.6% who presented with T1 tumours and 7.9% who presented with T3 tumours.  Tumour size was not available for 21.6% of women. 13.7% of patients presented with Stage 1, 41.2%  with Stage 2, 15.7% with Stage 3 and 3.9% presented with Stage 4 disease. Information about stage  was not available for 25.5% of patients in our study. Grades of tumours at presentation were as follows:  5.9% had Grade 1 tumours, 43.1% had Grade 2 tumours and 23.5% had Grade 3 tumours and information about grade was not available for 27.5% of tumours. Infiltrating ductal carcinoma was the most common histological type accounting for 70.6% of all histological types. It was observed that 52.9% of women did not have any axillary lymph node metastasis at the time of diagnosis whilst 37.3% did. Axillary lymph  node status was not available for 9.8 % of women. The association of smoking, family history of breast carcinoma and oral contraception with women presenting with breast cancer in our study was not  established. A study such as this provides an overview of the clinical presentation of breast cancer in Mauritius.

Keywords: breast cancer, risk factors for breast cancer, tumour size, tumour grade, tumour stage, and histological type