Treatment results and patient characeristics for breast cancer patients older than 70 Years Gülçin Ertaş 1 , Fatih Karataş 2 *, Ali Rıza Üçer 1 , Güçlü Sezai Kılıçoğlu 1 , Muzaffer Bedri Altundağ 1 1 Department of Radiation Oncology, Ankara Oncology Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, TR 2 Department of Medical Oncology, Karabuk University Faculty of Medicine, Karabuk, TR * Corresponding Author: Fatih Karataş E-mail: drfatihkaratas@gmail.com ABSTRACT Objective: The incidence of breast cancer (BC) subtypes varies according to age, and its treatment is more strenuous and requires much more attention in advanced ages. The aim of this study is to investigate patient characteristics and treatment results respectively for patients older than 70 years. Materials and Methods: In this study, we examined 188 elderly BC patients treated in our hospital, at March 2008 - November 2019. Patient characteristics and demographics were investigated from patients’ files retrospectively. Results: Mean age of the patients was 74.3 ± 4 years (All female). The presence of comorbid diseases was 76.1%. Major histology was invasive ductal carcinoma in 72.9% and mostly grade 2 differentiated, and the majority of patients were T2 size (58.5%). Oestrogen receptor (OR) positivity was seen in 83%, Progesterone receptor (PR) positivity in 72.3% of patients and cerb2 positivity in 16.5%. Luminal B (47.9%) was the most common in molecular subgroup analysis. Patients with lymph node involvement (N1 33%; N2, 19.1%; N3, 6.9%) were higher than those without involvement (34%). Surgery type was modified radical mastectomy (MRM) for 51.6%, breast conserving surgery (BCS) for 39.4 % and lumpectomy for 7.4%. In a median follow-up time was 53.9 (9-101) months, local recurrence was seen in 5 (2.7%) patients and distant metastasis was developed in 16 (8.5%) patients. The median overall survival was worse in those with MRM than those with BSC (p=0.006). In multivariate logistic regression analysis, only found that lymph node positivity was an independent risk factor for metastasis (HR; 4.15, 95% CI:1.019-16.933, P=0.047). Conclusion: While it was observed that the most important risk factor for metastasis risk in elderly patients was lymph node positivity; The hormonal status and her2 conditions were not affected in terms of metastasis. It was thought that tumor clinical course and relapse may differ in the elderly population compared to general BC patients. Key words: Breast cancer, elderly, treatment, comorbidity, survival Research Article Received 29-01-2022 Accepted 25-02-2022 Available Online: 01-03-2022 Published 30-03-2022 Distributed under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC 4.0 OPEN ACCESS INTRODUCTION Elderly women with breast cancer (BC) are increasing rapidly because of the rising average life expectancy of the population. Nearly 50 % women diagnosed BC are > 65 years old (1). Treatment options of BC are generally substandard in older patients. There are some studies showing that tumor subtype and patient age are important prognostic factors to determine optimal treatment (2,3). Although the primary surgical approach is generally conservative in advanced age patients (4), standard surgery methods are increasing rapidly like younger patients, especially with little or no comorbidities (5-11 ). Although axillary dissection is controversial due to treatment morbidity in clinically negative patients (12-16), in a group of more high-risk patients who are healthy, lymph node evaluation may supply important information about adjuvant treatment options such as chemotherapy (17). Adjuvant treatment decisions such as chemotherapy, hormonotherapy, radiotherapy can change some factors including patient life expectancy, comorbidities and patient choice. In patients with breast-conserving surgery, ipsilateral tumor recurrence is reduced by postoperative adjuvant radiotherapy (18-20). On the other hand, hormone receptor-positive, axillary negative low-risk patients hormonotherapy option without radiotherapy was investigated (21). MSD Medical Science and Discovery ISSN: 2148-6832