National population-based study of racial variation in characteristics and outcomes of young breast cancer patients: Analysis of temporal trends.
e18068 Background: Breast cancer outcomes correlate with racial and socioeconomic status. Efforts to reduce disparities in breast cancer among vulnerable populations has had limited success. We sought to examine trends of racial and socioeconomic factors and its impact on outcome in young breast cancer patients. Methods: Using the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database, we identified female patients aged 20-35 with invasive breast cancer diagnosed from 1990-2012. We performed univariate, multivariate and survival analysis. Variables included patient age, race, stage, receptor status, surgery type and year of diagnosis. Results: A total of 18,999 women were identified. Mean age was 31.7. 80.8% were white and 19.1% were black. A higher percentage of blacks had stage III/IV disease (34% v 27%) and ≥ 4 positive nodes (19% v 16%) compared to whites. 54% of whites were ER receptor positive while 46% of blacks were ER receptor positive (p<0.0001). Analysis of American Community Survey attributes indicated white patents were more likely to live in counties where ≤15% of households were below the poverty line (64% v 45%) and where ≤15% of the population had less than a high school education (35% v 28%) compared to blacks. 31.2% were diagnosed in 1990-2000 while 68.7% were diagnosed in 2001-2012. 5 year disease specific survival (DSS) was 79.1% among all patients diagnosed from 1990-2000 and 84.2% among patients diagnosed from 2001-2012 (p<0.0001). In each time period, white patients had significant difference in 5 year DSS compared to black patients. While the 5 year DSS for white patients improved from 80.9% to 86.3% (p<0.0001), the 5 year DSS improvement for black patients from 1990-2000 to 2001-2012 did not reach statistical significance (71.3% vs 75.7%, p=0.24). Conclusions: Demographic and economic factors are associated with outcomes in young breast cancer patients. Absolute DSS has improved over consecutive time periods, but the improvement was not significant among blacks. More effort is needed to evaluate and address disparity in these patients. [Table: see text]