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Breast Cancer survival statistics
Survival rates for breast cancer have been improving for more than twenty years and more women are being successfully treated than ever before.
The information on breast cancer survival rates on this page is written for use by health professionals. If you are looking for information because you or someone you know has been affected by breast cancer, then the CancerHelp UK pages on breast cancer are likely to be more relevant and useful, particularly the section on statistics and prognosis.
This page includes breast cancer survival statistics including trends, survival by age and stage of diagnosis and patterns by deprivation.
Understanding breast cancer survival statistics
In general, when talking about cancer survival rates, five-year survival is most commonly used. This is because one-year survival gives only a very short term view of prognosis and progress and for ten-year survival and beyond you have to look at people diagnosed a long time ago.
However, a new method of predicting survival rates has meant that we are now able to estimate long term survival rates for women with breast cancer.
A common misconception is to treat survival rates as ‘cure’ rates. However, there are very few types of cancer for which the five-year survival rate effectively represents a cure rate. For the vast majority of cancers survival rates continue to fall beyond five years after diagnosis, most notably for women with breast cancer, among whom survival rates continue to decline more than twenty years after diagnosis.
Breast cancer survival rates trends
Survival rates for breast cancer have been improving for more than 20 years. The estimated relative five-year survival rate for women diagnosed in England and Wales in 2001-2003 was 80%, compared with only 52% for women diagnosed in 1971-1975 (Figure 3.1)1,2 14 The estimated relative twenty year survival rate for women with breast cancer has gone from 44% in the early 1990s to 64% for the most recent period.
Breast cancer survival rates in the rest of the UK are similar. The latest survival statistics for Scottish women show that five-year relative survival rates have increased from 63.5% for patients diagnosed in 1981-85 to 79.7% for those diagnosed in 1996-99.3
Breast cancer survival rates by age
As Figure 3.21 shows, breast cancer survival rates at 5, 10, 15 and 20 years are higher in women diagnosed in their 50s and 60s than rates for either younger or older women.
The largest improvements in five-year survival have been for women aged 50-69 years, while the improvement in 1-year survival was similar in all age groups.4[4]
Breast cancer survival rates by stage at diagnosis
The later the stage of breast cancer at diagnosis, the lower the survival rate (Figure 3.35).
The proportion of advanced stage breast cancer cases increases with age, and some, but not all studies show that older women are more likely to delay in the presentation of breast cancer6.
Breast cancer survival rates and deprivation
Women with breast cancer who live in affluent areas have better survival rates than women in deprived areas1-2. The most recent data for England and Wales has shown a statistically significant deprivation gap difference of 5.8% in five-year survival for women diagnosed between 1996 and 1999. Scottish data in Figure 3.43 shows a 6% difference in five-year survival between the least and most deprived groups of patients (76.7 v 70.4%).
A study in Glasgow showed that women from deprived areas are more likely to present with locally advanced or metastatic disease11-12. A follow up study of the Glasgow work concluded that women living in affluent areas did not receive better NHS care and that women from deprived areas seem to have greater co-morbidity13.
References
- Coleman, M.P., et al., Trends and socioeconomic inequalities in cancer survival in England and Wales up to 2001. Br J Cancer, 2004. 90(7): p. 1367-73
- Coleman, M.P., et al., Cancer Survival Trends in England & Wales, 1971-1995 Deprivation & NHS Region. 1999: The Stationery Office.
- Information and Statistics Division, NHS Scotland ISD Online, 2004.
- Coleman, M., Trends in breast cancer incidence, survival, and mortality. Lancet, 2000. 356(9229): p. 590
- West Midlands Cancer Intelligence Unit, 0-10 year relative survival for cases of breast cancer by stage diagnosed in the West Midlands 1985-1989 followed up to the end of 1999, as at January 2002.
- Ramirez, A.J., et al., Factors predicting delayed presentation of symptomatic breast cancer: a systematic review. Lancet, 1999. 353(9159): p. 1127-31
- Taylor, R., P. Davis, and J. Boyages, Long-term survival of women with breast cancer in New South Wales. Eur J Cancer, 2003. 39(2): p. 215-22
- Sainsbury, R., et al., Influence of clinician workload and patterns of treatment on survival from breast cancer. Lancet, 1995. 345(8960): p. 1265-70
- Jolly, K., et al., Volumes of cancer surgery for breast, colorectal and ovarian cancer 1992-97: Is there evidence of increasing sub-specialization by surgeons? Br J Cancer, 2001. 84(10): p. 1308-13.
- Kingsmore, D., et al., Specialisation and breast cancer survival in the screening era. Br J Cancer, 2003. 88(11): p. 1708-12.
- Macleod, U., et al., Socio-economic deprivation and stage of disease at presentation in women with breast cancer. Ann Oncol, 2000. 11(1): p. 105-7
- Thomson, C.S., et al., Prognostic factors in women with breast cancer: distribution by socioeconomic status and effect on differences in survival. J Epidemiol Community Health, 2001. 55(5): p. 308-15
- Macleod, U., et al.,Primary and secondary care management of women with early breast cancer from affluent and deprived areas: retrospective review of hospital and general practice records. Bmj, 2000. 320(7247): p. 1442-5
- Office for National Statistics, Long term Breast cancer Survival, England and Wales, up to 2003.
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