Risk of dying from breast cancer has dropped sharply since the 90s, research shows

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in women in Canada and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in Canadian women. But studies show improvement in survival rates.

Women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer can expect to become long-term survivors of the disease, according to a recent study.

The study, published Tuesday by the BMJ, found the average risk of dying from breast cancer in the five years after an early-stage diagnosis has fallen to five per cent from 14 per cent since the 1990s.

The study included 512,447 women diagnosed with early breast cancer (meaning it had not spread outside the breast) in England from 1993 to 2015.

“We followed them for up to 20 years and we found the prognosis for women with early breast cancer has improved substantially during the past 20 years,” Carolyn Taylor, professor of oncology at the University of Oxford and lead author of the study, told Global News.

“You can use the data to estimate the risk of breast cancer death by five years. And I think some women don’t want to know their prognosis. But for some women, this will be really reassuring. It can help people to plan ahead, to plan their lives,” she said.

Breast cancer is the most common type of cancer in women in Canada and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in Canadian women, according to the Canadian Cancer Society.

The national cancer charity estimates that about one in eight Canadian women will develop breast cancer during their lifetime and one in 34 will die from it.

The five-year survival rate for breast cancer in women in the country is 89 per cent, meaning a vast majority of women diagnosed with breast cancer will live for at least five years, the society stated on its website.