Pharma

Biography

Aishwarya Sitaram has done MBBS, MD and DNB from India and completed Postdoctoral Certificate Course in Oncopathology from P D Hinduja Hospital & MRC, Mumbai, India. She is currently working as Assistant Professor in K J Somaiya Medical College and Research Centre, Mumbai, India.

Abstract

As per the latest Indian Council of Medical Research Statistics, breast cancer is the most common cancer among Indian women with an estimation of 1.5 lakh new cases (over 10% of all cancers seen during 2016). According to the National Cancer Registry almost 48% of breast cancer patients currently are below 50 years of age in comparison to 25 years ago, when 69% of the patients were over 50 years of age. Mammographic screening has not become a method of cancer prevention in India, partly because of the cost and also lack of its awareness. Nevertheless, in urban areas screening sonomammograms and image guided biopsies of suspicious lesions has led to an increased detection of early breast cancer. In our study on 146 cases of non-palpable screen detected biopsy proven early breast cancer, we found that Luminal A subtype was the most common. It was also seen that a subset of patients of younger age (<50 years) showed larger and higher grade tumours with triple negative and HER2 positive subtypes. 12% of our patients showed nodal and systemic metastasis, both of which were seen mostly in the non-Luminal A sub types. There were 33 cases of DCIS and one case of malignant Phyllodes tumour.