Survival of Filipino women with breast cancer in the United States

Abstract

Background: The survival of women with early-stage breast cancer varies by racial group. Filipino women with breast cancer are an understudied group and are often combined with other Asian groups. We compared clinical presentations and survival rates for Filipino and White women with breast cancer diagnosed in the United States.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of women with breast cancer diagnosed between 2004 and 2015 in the SEER18 registries database. We compared crude survival between Filipino and White women. We then calculated adjusted hazard ratios (HR) in a propensity-matched design using the Cox proportional hazards model.

Results: There were 10,834 Filipino (2.5%) and 414,618 White women (97.5%) with Stage I-IV breast cancer in the SEER database. The mean age at diagnosis was 57.5 years for Filipino women and 60.8 years for White women (p < 0.0001). Filipino women had more high-grade and larger tumors than White women and were more likely to have node-positive disease. Among women with Stage I-IIIC breast cancer, the crude 10-year breast cancer-specific survival rate was 91.0% for Filipino and 88.9% for White women (HR 0.81, 95% CI 0.74-0.88, p < 0.01). In a propensity-matched analysis, the HR was 0.73 (95% CI 0.66-0.81). The survival advantage for Filipino women was present in subgroups defined by age of diagnosis, nodal status, estrogen receptor status, and HER2 receptor status.

Conclusion: In the United States, Filipino women often present with more advanced breast cancers than White women, but experience better breast cancer-specific survival.

Keywords: Filipino; breast cancer; cancer epidemiology.

FIGURE 1

Study flow diagram.

FIGURE 2

(A) Crude and (B) propensity‐matched Kaplan–Meier survival curves for Filipino versus White women with stage I–III breast cancer. (C) Propensity‐matched Kaplan–Meier survival curves of Filipino versus white women with stage I–III HER2‐positive breast cancers.

FIGURE 3

(A) Crude and (B) adjusted annual breast cancer‐specific mortality rates for Filipino versus White women with stage I–III breast cancer.