Abstract

Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is a rare yet aggressive form of breast cancer. We examined differences in patient demographics and outcomes in IBC compared to locally advanced breast cancer (LABC) and all other breast cancer patients from the Breast and Prostate Cancer Data Quality and Patterns of Care Study (POC-BP), containing information from cancer registries in seven states. Out of 7,624 cases of invasive carcinoma, IBC and LABC accounted for 2.2% (N = 170) and 4.9% (N = 375), respectively. IBC patients were more likely to have a higher number (P = 0.03) and severity (P = 0.01) of comorbidities than other breast cancer patients. Among IBC patients, a higher percentage of patients with metastatic disease versus nonmetastatic disease were black, on Medicaid, and from areas of higher poverty and more urban areas. Black and Hispanic IBC patients had worse overall and breast cancer-specific survival than white patients; moreover, IBC patients with Medicaid, patients from urban areas, and patients from areas of higher poverty and lower education had worse outcomes. These data highlight the effects of disparities in race and socioeconomic status on the incidence of IBC as well as IBC outcomes. Further work is needed to reveal the causes behind these disparities and methods to improve IBC outcomes.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-15-2017

Notes/Citation Information

Published in Journal of Cancer Epidemiology, volume 2017, article ID 7574946, p. 1-8.

Copyright © 2017 Ryan A. Denu et al.

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/7574946

Funding Information

Ryan A. Denu is supported by the University of Wisconsin Medical Scientist Training Program (T32GM008692) and the University of Wisconsin ICTR TL1 Training Program (supported under NIH Awards UL1TR000427 and TL1TR000429). The data used for this publication were collected by the CDC National Program of Cancer Registries Patterns of Care Study for Female Breast and Prostate Cancers through cooperative agreements with the participating state cancer registries including Grant U01DP000261 to J. Frank Wilson. This study was also supported in part by NIH Grant P30CA014520.

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