Breast cancer survivors have a much greater chance of having secondary cancers, including endometrial and ovarian cancer for women and prostate cancer for men, according to new research based on data from almost 600,000 patients in England.
For the first time, researchers discovered that this risk is larger in persons living in areas with higher socioeconomic disadvantage.
Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the UK. Around 56,000 people in the UK are diagnosed each year, the vast majority (over 99 per cent) of whom are women. Improvements in earlier diagnosis and in treatments mean that five year survival rates have been increasing over time, reaching 87 per cent by 2017 in England.
People who survive breast cancer are at risk of second primary cancer, but until now the exact risk has been unclear. Previously published research suggested that women and men who survive breast cancer are at a 24 per cent and 27 per cent greater risk of a non-breast second primary cancer than the wider population respectively. There have been also suggestions that second primary cancer risks differ by the age at breast cancer diagnosis.
To provide more accurate estimates, a team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge analysed data from over 580,000 female and over 3,500 male breast cancer survivors diagnosed between 1995 and 2019 using the National Cancer Registration Dataset. The results of their analysis are published today in Lancet Regional Health – Europe.