Abstract 767: Breast cancer in sub-Saharan Africa: a histopathologic review from a tertiary hospital in Northern Nigeria

Introduction: Breast cancer is the commonest cancer in women world-wide, however, there are discrepancies in the incidence among different geographical regions. The highest incidence rate is in North American, Northern and Western European, while the lowest rate is found among Asian and sub-Sahara African women. Breast cancer is undoubtedly heterogeneous in terms of its presentation, morphology and molecular profiles. Studies from the developing countries suggested that there are differences between the biology of BC in the developing and developed countries.

Methods: This is a retrospective histopathologic review of breast cancer cases between 1st January 2003 and 31st December 2015 from the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital Zaria - Nigeria.

Results: A total of 784 breast cancer cases were seen during the study period and majority of the cases (99.4%) were females. The prevalence of breast cancer was found to be 12.6%. Triple-negative breast cancers (TNBC) constitute 67.7% of cases. The mean age was 45.8 ±12.0 years and the youngest patient was 18 years while the oldest was 90 years. Out of the 784 cases, 208 were mastectomies while the remaining were incisional, trucut needle and excisional biopsies. Infiltrating ductal carcinoma NST was the most common histologic variant seen (94.7%) and most of these cases (59.1%) were Grade II tumors. The Nottingham Prognostic Index (NPI) shows that 91.4% of the cases have NPI Score of ≥3.5 with attendant poor 5-year survival rate.

Conclusion: This study found that breast cancer is common and affects mostly women in fifth decade of life. There is a high TNBC among the population studied and therefore androgen receptor profile and genomic studies may be useful to determine the course of therapy.

Note: This abstract was not presented at the meeting.

Citation Format: Saad A. Ahmed, Balarabe Kabir, Nasiru Abubakar. Breast cancer in sub-Saharan Africa: a histopathologic review from a tertiary hospital in Northern Nigeria [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 767. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-767

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