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Estimating The Impact Of Lost To Follow-Up On Breast Cancer Patients' Disease-Free Survival, Debbie Yan Qun Huang

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Background The 5-year survival rate for patients with breast cancer is much higher than patients with other types of cancer. Due to this longer survival period, breast cancer patients also tend to have increased rates of lost to follow-up, when compared to other cancers. When a patient becomes lost, the occurrence of distant metastasis cannot be reliably ascertained, unless the patient had a breast cancer-specific (BC) death. The impact of lost patients on recurrence rates and disease-free survival (DFS) was explored in breast cancer patients seen at the City of Hope from 1997 to 2012.

Methods Female breast cancer patients …