Age and stage at diagnosis: a hospital series of 11 women with intellectual disability and breast carcinoma

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer has been poorly studied in women with intellectual disability (ID), which makes designing a policy for screening the nearly 70 million women with ID in the world difficult. As no data is available in the literature, we evaluated breast cancer at diagnosis in women with ID. METHODS: Women with ID were searched retrospectively among all women treated for invasive breast cancer in a single hospital over 18 years. Age at diagnosis was compared among the whole group of women. Tumor size, lymph node involvement, SBR grade, TNM classification, and AJCC stage were compared to controls matched for age and period of diagnosis using conditional logistic regression. RESULTS: Among 484 women with invasive breast cancer, 11 had ID. The mean age at diagnosis was 55.6 years in women with ID and 62.4 years in the other women. The mean tumor size in women with ID was 3.53 cm, compared to 1.80 cm in 44 random controls from among the 473 women without ID. Lymph node involvement was observed in 9 of the 11 women with ID compared to 12 of the controls (OR = 11.53, p = 0.002), and metastases were found in 3 of the 11 women with ID compared to 1 of the 44 controls (OR = 12.00, p = 0.031). The AJCC stage was higher in women with ID compared to controls (OR = 3.19, p = 0.010). CONCLUSIONS: Women with ID presented at an earlier age with tumors of a higher AJCC stage than controls despite no significant differences in tumor grade and histological type. Thus, delayed diagnosis may be responsible for the differences between disabled and non-disabled women.