Selected inflammatory breast cancer research published in 2017
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An abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, conference proceeding, or any in-depth analysis of a particular subject and is often used to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper’s purpose. The abstract can convey the main results and conclusions of a scientific article but the full text article must be consulted for details of the methodology, the full experimental results, and a critical discussion of the interpretations and conclusions.
The abstract below is edited for length. Read the free complete article on PubMed Central.
Denu, RA., et al. (2017) Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities Are More Pronounced in Inflammatory Breast Cancer Than Other Breast Cancers. Journal of Cancer Epidemiology. 2017;2017:7574946. doi: 10.1155/2017/7574946.
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.