TITLE:
Treatment Patterns and Mortality Risk among Elderly Patients with Metastatic Triple Negative Breast Cancer in the United States: An Observational Cohort Study Using SEER-Medicare Data
AUTHORS:
Sacha Satram-Hoang, Preeti Bajaj, Alisha Stein, Patricia Cortazar, Faiyaz Momin, Carolina Reyes
KEYWORDS:
Triple Negative Breast Cancer, Elderly Patients, Chemotherapy, Survival
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Cancer Therapy,
Vol.10 No.2,
February
15,
2019
ABSTRACT: Purpose:
Triple negative breast cancer is more aggressive than other breast cancer
subtypes and accounts for up to 20% of all breast cancers.
Despite the poorer prognosis, there are no approved targeted treatments
available and chemotherapy remains the only choice. We examined treatment
patterns and outcomes among elderly metastatic triple-negative breast cancer
(mTNBC) patients in routine clinical practice. Methods: Patients were
identified from the linked SEER-Medicare database between 1/1/2001 and 12/31/2013 and included de novo Stage IV (n = 776) and patients with distant metastasis followed an
initial diagnosis of Stage I - III
disease (n = 1851). Kaplan-Meier analyses and time-varying Cox proportional
hazards regression were used to assess overall survival (OS). Results: The mean age at
metastatic diagnosis was 77.6 years and 1259 (48%) patients received
chemotherapy. Compared to -month longer unadjusted OS compared to the ≥70 cohort (log rank p Conclusions: In this
real-world analysis, 48% of elderly mTNBC patients did not receive chemotherapy
and a greater proportion were untreated in the ≥70 year old cohort (55%).
Although the survival benefits of chemotherapy were greater in the younger
cohort, the benefits of treatment persisted in ≥70 year olds. These findings
suggest opportunities exist to improve the clinical treatment of elderly mTNBC
patients.