Chemotherapy in the Management of Cancer

Abstract

Breast cancer is now the commonest cancer in Britain. Every year more than 48,000 women, and 300 men, will find they have breast cancer. Overall nearly one in nine women will develop the condition at some time during their lives. The risk of getting the disease increases with age: half of all breast cancers are first diagnosed in women over the age of 65, and a quarter are first diagnosed in women over the age of 75. Breast cancer is getting more common. The number of new cases each year in the UK has doubled over the last 40 years. Although this increase in the frequency of the disease is worrying, it is offset by the fact that the cure rate is rapidly improving. In the early 1990s only about half of all women who had breast cancer could expect to live 10 years or more, but now this figure has increased to more than seven out of ten, and is expected to improve further over the coming years.