Cardiovascular Diseases Kill More Women than Breast Cancer

According to the conclusions of a large-scale survey carried out by researchers in the United States it would appear that cardiovascular diseases are the leading caused of death among women with breast cancer. These results reflect advancements made in cancer therapies over the years.

Of women who develop breast cancer, only a small portion die as a direct result of the condition. The declining number of victims this disease causes – despite it being more widespread now than ever – is owed to new early detection methods and advanced therapies.

Some 33 percent of all women with cancer have breast cancer, official statistics show. In this group, more than 66 percent of women die from other conditions than breast cancer, and most deaths are due to cardiovascular diseases.

The new report appears in the latest issue of BioMed Central’s open-access scientific journal Breast Cancer Research, AlphaGalileo reports. It mainly shows that breast cancer is the most common cancer in the UK, affecting one in 8 women.

About 80 percent of these women are more than 50 years old. Interestingly, breast cancer was found to be most deadly for young women, those with high tumor grades or those with ER negative status.

In the new research, scientists from the University of Colorado analyzed more than 60,000 women for 12 years. Information on study participants were collected from the SEER-Medicare database. All of the women were more than 66 years old when the research began.

When they study concluded, about half of the original group was still alive. The women who died in the mean time lived to an average age of 83. Of the latter, more than 66 percent died of conditions other than breast cancer.

“Cancer is a big killer and is responsible for about a quarter of all deaths. However breast cancer is not necessarily a death sentence and patients need to take care of their health to reduce their risk of dying from heart disease and other age-related diseases,” UC expert Jennifer Patnaik explains.

What the result revealed was that there is basically no difference in the leading cause of death between older women who have breast cancer and female seniors in the general population. For the latter, cardiovascular disease have always been the leading cause of death.