Smoking breast cancer link

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Smoking cigarettes is linked to an increased risk of cancers of the lung, head and neck, esophagus, bladder and a number of others and also affects response to anti-cancer therapys. But smoking does not result in more advanced stage diagnoses or aggressive breast cancers at the time of diagnosis. That is the result of an analysis of 35 years of data for more than 6,000 patients presented today at the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncologys 49th Annual Meeting in Los Angeles.

We hypothesized that tobacco use could result in more advanced stage or more aggressive breast cancer presentation, but that doesnt appear to be the case, said Matthew Abramowitz, M.D.,a resident in the radiation oncology department at Fox Chase Cancer Center. There is no good news about smoking, but since about 10 percent of our patients are smokers, this research provides us with some relief. The question that remains is will smoking affect their survival?

Abramowitz and colleagues examined the medical records of 6,162 patients with breast cancer at the time of initial diagnosis from 1970 to 2006 at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. Patient characteristics were prospectively collected by doctor interview and questionnaire. Nine percent of the patients were current smokers when they were first seen for consultation.

There was no statistically significant connection between smoking and the stage of the disease or the aggressiveness of the tumor, concluded Abramowitz. The remaining question is does smoking affect how long these women live? In other words, does smoking affect the tumors behavior, its effect on the therapy to kill the cancer or recovery from therapy?


Posted by: Janet    Source