Abstract

Norly Salleh* Maszuraidah Md. Charep, Aida Surya Othman and Mastura Hasanal Bashri

ABSTRACT

Background: Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-associated death in women. Malaysian women tend to present late and this poses a challenge to the healthcare provider. B-Care or Breast Cancer Resource Centre is a walk in clinic that was established in our hospital since 2014. One of the reasons of its establishment is to overcome the accessibility problem that our patients might have, therefore, improving the stage at presentation and subsequently the prognosis. This study was done to characterize breast cancer at presentation for our population since the introduction of B-Care. Methods: This is a retrospective, observational study of all newly diagnosed breast cancer patients presented to our centre from January 2017 till January 2019. Patients with recurrent or previous contralateral breast cancers were excluded. Patients were identified from our database. Secondary data was collected and analysed. Results: A total of 73 patients were included in the study. The mean age at diagnosis was 54.1 ± 10.8 year (range 24-83 years). Most of them had no known risk factors. More than forty seven percent of patients presented with early stage of breast cancer (Stage 0-II) and 39.7% presented with late stage (stage III-IV). Most patients had surgery done. Modified radical mastectomy was performed in 56 patients (76.7%), 3 had toilet mastectomy (4.1%) and 10 had wide local excision of cancer (13.7%). Conclusions: The introduction of B-Care has improved the stage at presentation of our breast cancer patients’ in Hospital Segamat.