Breast and cervical cancer survival at Instituto Nacional de Cancerología, Colombia

Objective: to provide and compare estimations of two-year overall survival for cervical and female breast cancer in three cohorts (first treated in 2007, 2010, 2012) at the Instituto Nacional de Cancerología of Colombia
Methods: All patients first treated at the Instituto Nacional de Cancerología for breast or cervical cancer in the years 2007, 2010, 2012, without a prior cancer diagnosis, were included for the study. The hospital-based cancer registry was crosslinked with governmental databases to obtain follow-up information on all patients. Probability of surviving 24 months since the date of entry at the hospital was estimated using Kaplan-Meier methods, using the log-rank test to evaluate differences between groups.
Results: We analyzed 1,928 breast cancer cases and 1,189 cervical cancer cases, resulting in an overall survival probability at 24 months of 79.6% (95% CI: 77.8-81.4) for BC and of 63.3% (95% CI: 60.6-66.0) for cervical cancer, there were no differences in survival for year of entry. Advanced clinical stage substantial affected overall survival, being 32.2% (95% CI: 28.4-44.0) for stage IV breast cancer and 22.6% (95% CI: 11.4-33.8) for stage IV cervical cancer.
Conclusions: Breast cancer was the cancer with the best survival at Instituto Nacional de Cancerología; cervical cancer the one with the lowest survival. Overall survival did not change over the years for any of the cancers.

Keywords
Breast cancer; cancer of the uterine cervix; survival analysis; hospital-based; registry; Colombia