Breast conservation therapy decreased heart-specific mortality in breast cancer patients compared with mastectomy

AIM: To investigate the impacts of breast conservation therapy (BCT) and mastectomy on heart-specific mortality in breast cancer patients. METHODS: Patients with primary breast cancer registered in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database between Jan 1998 and Dec 2015 were included. Patients were divided into either breast conservation therapy or mastectomy group. To compare mortality caused by heart diseases in breast cancer patients with BCT or mastectomy, univariate and multivariate regression after propensity score matching (PSM) were performed. Kaplan-Meier analysis was also used to evaluate heart-specific survival between two groups. RESULTS: 132,616 patients with breast cancer were enrolled in this study. After PSM, four risk factors including age, race, marital status and types of surgery were identified significantly associated with death from heart diseases. Heart-specific survival analysis further showed that overall, BCT poses a lower risk to heart-specific mortality compared with mastectomy. CONCLUSION: Compared with mastectomy, BCT significantly decreased heart-specific mortality in breast cancer patients.