1Department of Preventive Medicine, Konkuk University Collegeof Medicine, Korea. suepark@kku.ac.kr 2Department of Preventive Medicine, Seoul National UniveristyCollege of Medicine, Korea. 3Department of General Surgery, Asan Medical Center, UlsanUniveristy College of Medicine, Korea. 4Department of General Surgery, Seoul National UniveristyCollege of Medicine, Korea. 5Institute of Medical Science, Konkuk University College ofMedicine, Korea. 6CRI (Cancer Research Institute), Seoul National UniveristyCollege of Medicine, Korea.
Published online: February 28, 2003.
ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: The aims were to evaluate the main risk factors (RFs) of breast cancer and to estimate the individual disease-probability from combinations of RFs in Korean female. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted case-control study of 1, 687 incident cases of invasive carcinoma and 1, 238 controls during 1996~2000. A breast cancer disease-probability model was established by a general modeling process using a multivariate logistic regression model, which included the main Korean RFs and synergistic interaction-terms. RESULTS: The main Korean RFs selected were age, family history of second relatives, BMI, age at first full term pregnancy, breast-feeding, and a special test on the breasts. Two synergisms were observed between age and breast-feeding, and between special test and age at first fullterm pregnancy. The disease-probability and model are shown in Table 4, and Appendix 1. CONCLUSION: The availability of previous Western models was limited for Korean female due to the differences inhazard-rates and the characteristics of breast cancer between Asian and Western females. Due to limited basic data, i.e. incidence, hazard-rate and cancer-cohorts, the developing-probability of breast cancer for Korean females was not calculated.
Therefore, the disease-probability was calculated instead.
This approach might be more beneficial for Koreans, and help in the decision- making for regular screening or hospital visit-interval, counseling in breast-cancer clinics, prescribing high-risk population, and in educating for primary prevention, although it over-estimates the relative probability compared to the developing-probability and the 65% predictive validity.