Axillary Surgery Among Estrogen Receptor Positive Women 70 Years of Age or Older with Clinical Stage I Breast Cancer, 2004–2010: A Report from the National Cancer Data Base

Randomized trials have not demonstrated a survival benefit for axillary dissection in the elderly, but the use of axillary staging for women 70 years of age and older remains controversial.

We utilized the National Cancer Data Base to study the use of axillary staging from 2004 to 2010 on 102,026 clinically node-negative and estrogen receptor-positive cases of pT1N0 tumors. Chi-square and logistic regression models were used to determine the trends and factors related to axillary staging.

Axillary nodes were examined in 88.9 % of the total cohort, and the trend significantly increased from 87.7 % in 2004 to 89.2 % in 2010. A total of 77.2 % of patients underwent lumpectomy and 22.8 % mastectomy, with 87.0 % of lumpectomy patients undergoing axillary staging compared to 95.5 % of mastectomy patients. Predictors of axillary staging examined were age, comorbidity, income, histology, grade, facility type, facility location, and population density. The strongest independent predictor of axillary staging was age: 96.0 % of women aged 70–75 years underwent axillary staging, versus 92.3 % of women 75–80 years old, 83.2 % of women 80–85 years old, 66.5 % of women 86–90 years old, and 45.6 % of women >90 years old. Patients treated at academic/research facilities were 18.5 % less likely (odds ratio 0.81, 95 % confidence interval 0.76–0.87) than community cancer programs to undergo axillary staging. There was significant regional variation among U.S. Census regions: patients treated in the Midwest were 3.8 times more likely to undergo axillary staging than those treated in the Northeast.

Despite data indicating decreased utility, axillary staging remains overutilized in women with advancing age.