A long-term study into breast cancer treatment in the ACT and surrounding region has found significant improvements in survival rates.
Minister for Health, Rachel Stephen-Smith said The ACT and South East NSW Breast Cancer Treatment Group Quality Assurance Project Report, supported by Canberra Health Services and NSW Health, summarised data collected over a 20-year period to June 2017 to improve the quality of breast cancer treatment.
“The comprehensive study was enlightening for our clinical community and its findings give people hope for better health outcomes for breast cancer survival,” Ms Stephen-Smith said.
“This Report has been a collective effort between a voluntary group of highly skilled clinicians, surgeons, oncologists and nurses,” she said.
“All have dedicated their time to this significant study, creating a valuable resource that will provide great benefit to clinicians and patients.”
Ms Stephen-Smith said that since the project began in 1997, its findings had contributed to and steered the care people received after a breast cancer diagnosis.
The Minister said a standout finding of the Report was that the risk of a woman getting a recurring cancer after an operation and treatment for an invasive breast cancer had dropped 61 per cent in 20 years.
She said other key findings included that 35 per cent of all cases of invasive breast cancer were screen-detected; of the 669 non-invasive cancers, 76 per cent were detected through a screening program; 47.9 per cent of women with operable invasive early breast cancer underwent mastectomy; in the last five years there was an increase in the number of women undergoing breast conserving surgery; and 6,676 people participated in the study which involved 58 clinicians.
The 166-page Report can be accessed on the Health Directorate’s website at this PS News link.
