Understanding the Importance of Breast Cancer Statistics
Breast cancer is deeply personal. It fundamentally affects the patient, her family and her friends in a way that statistics cannot capture. However, the statistics do provide useful information about the number of women who are affected by this disease and about different trends with the disease.
So, while statistics may provide little comfort to a patient and her loved ones who are dealing with the effects of breast cancer, the statistics do provide objective information about the prevalence of the disease, the women who are at greatest risk of developing the disease and how we, as a society, are doing in combating the disease.
Who Is At Risk?
The National Cancer Institute reports that 126.1 of every 100,000 women in the United States developed breast cancer from 2001-2005. The ethnic group with the highest incidence of breast cancer was white women with an incidence rate of 130.6 per 100,000 women. The group with the lowest rate was American Indians / Alaskan natives with a rate of 75 per 100,000 women.
The median age at which women were diagnosed with cancer during the 2001-2005 time period was 61 years of age. Very few women under the age of 34 were diagnosed with the disease. The age bracket with the greatest occurrence of diagnosis of the disease was 55-64 year old women who had an incidence rate of 23.3%.
The National Cancer Institute predicts that just over 12% of girls born today will eventually be diagnosed with this disease and that almost half of those girls will develop the disease between ages 50 and 70.
How Many Women Died?
The mortality rate among women with breast cancer was 25 of every 100,000 women. However, certain ethnic groups who had lower incidents of breast cancer diagnosis had higher mortality rates. African American women had the highest rate of mortality at 33.5 women per 100,000. White women had a rate of 24.4 for every 100,000 women and Hispanics came in with the lowest rate of mortality at 15.8 of every 100,000 women. The median age of death was 69 years of age.
The National Cancer Institute reports that from 1996-2004 the survival rate for breast cancer was 88.7% but cautions that the rate is closely tied to the stage at which the cancer is diagnosed and treated.
Based on the information available to the National Cancer Institute, the Institute made a prediction that 182,460 women would be diagnosed with breast cancer during 2008 and that 40,480 women would die from the disease during 2008. To all of these women and their loved ones, the risk of cancer is no longer a risk and is now a reality. However, the statistics are useful to our understanding of this disease.