The Basic Facts of Korean Breast Cancer in 2012: Results from a Nationwide Survey and Breast Cancer Registry Database

Abstract

The Korean Breast Cancer Society has constructed a nationwide breast cancer database through utilization of an online registration program. We have reported the basic facts about breast cancer in Korea in 2012, and analyzed the changing patterns in the clinical characteristics and management of breast cancer in Korea over the last 10 years. Data on patients newly diagnosed with breast cancer were collected for the year 2012 from 97 hospitals and clinics nationwide using a questionnaire survey, and from the online registry database. A total of 17,792 patients were newly diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012. The crude incidence rate of female breast cancer, including invasive cancer and in situ cancer, was 70.7 cases per 100,000 women. The median age at diagnosis was 51 years, and the proportion of postmenopausal women was higher than that of premenopausal women among those diagnosed with breast cancer. The proportion of cases of early breast cancer increased continuously, and breast-conserving surgery was performed in more cases than total mastectomy in that same year. The total number of breast reconstruction surgeries increased approximately 3-fold over last 10 years. The 5-year overall survival rate for all stages of breast cancer patients was extremely high. The clinical characteristics of breast cancer have changed in ways that resulted in high overall survival over the past 10 years in Korea, and the surgical management of the disease has changed accordingly. Analysis of nationwide registry data will contribute to a better understanding of the characteristics of breast cancer in Korea.

Basic Facts of Breast Cancer in Korea in 2014: The 10-Year Overall Survival Progress

“…The KBCS has regularly presented the incidence and the trends of the characteristics of breast cancer in Korea, combining it with a nationwide survey, until 2016 [78]. From 2017, we substituted the KCCR database for the nationwide survey data about the incidence of breast cancer between 1999 and 2014.…”

“…Patients undergoing BCS increased steadily from approximately 5% in the late 1980s [16], to 56.8% in 2008, exceeding the number of patients undergoing mastectomy. These trends continued until 2012 as the proportion of BCS patients reached the twice that of mastectomy patients (67.2% vs. 32.3%) [7]. The proportion of patients undergoing BCS in 2013 did not increase anymore, and showed a very slight reduction to 67.1%.…”

“…Through this, KBCS conducted a large-scale epidemiological survey on breast cancer in Korea, highlighting different aspects from breast cancer in Western countries, which laid the foundation for the development of prophylactic and therapeutic methods to treat breast cancer in Korea. The breast cancer registration program, which started offline in 1996, was converted to an online registration project since 2001 [6789] and has actively collected large-scale epidemiological and clinical data, which has used for research on breast cancer in Korean patients.…”

Current Status and Future Projections of Breast Cancer in Asia

“…In Asian countries, the age at diagnosis of breast cancer is substantially lower than in high-income countries [11], with a median of 53.9 years in Japan, 51 years in Korea [12], 48-50 years in China [8], and 48.3 years in Thailand [13]. For Asian-Arab countries, the median age at breast cancer diagnosis is even below 50 years, with 48 years in Oman [14], 45 years in Saudi Arabia [15], and 44 years in Jordan [16].…”

Reduced RKIP Expression is Associated With Breast Neoplastic Progression and is Correlated With Poor Outcomes and Aberrant Methylation in Breast Carcinoma

“…1 Although standard treatment modalities consisting of local therapy and systemic adjuvant therapy have improved the overall survival and quality of life for these patients with breast cancer, current treatment options are still insufficient. 2 Therefore, there is a clinical need to develop new effective therapies and to identify new therapeutic targets for breast cancer.…”