Study: Survival After Breast Cancer Recurrence Improving

With the introduction of new drugs, the survival of women with recurrent breast cancer has improved by about 1 percent a year since 1974, according to researchers from the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

The researchers reviewed the records of 834 women who had been treated for breast cancer since 1974. All received chemotherapy after surgery, but developed a recurrence of their cancer despite that treatment.

In the 1974-79 time period, only 10 percent of the women lived 5 years. But by the 1995-2000 period, the 5-year survival rate had risen to 44 percent, the researchers reported in the journal Cancer.

The researchers could not state conclusively that new drugs are the primary reason women with recurrent breast cancer are surviving longer, but they noted that only 7 drugs were available in the 1970s compared to more than 25 in the 1990s.

"Improvement in survival over time would suggest that new therapies are helping women with recurrent disease live longer," the researchers added.

Other Sources: Cancer