The American Cancer Society says African-American women are more likely to die of breast cancer than any other racial or ethnic group.
Breast cancer can be fatal, especially if detected in its late stages and/or left untreated. The American Cancer Society estimates 40,170 women and 440 men will die of breast cancer in 2009. Only lung cancer causes more cancer deaths in American women.
Trends
Both the occurrence and death rate of breast cancer in American women has dropped significantly in the first decade of the 21st century. The Centers for Disease Control report that breast cancer incidence fell 2.2 percent per year from 1999 to 2005. The mortality rate dropped 1.8 percent each year from 1998 to 2005.
The mortality picture for men with breast cancer has remained nearly the same since 1975, although, according to ACS, the incidence of breast cancer in men rose about 1 percent per year between 1975 and 2004. Still, male breast cancer accounts for only 1 percent of all U.S. breast cancer cases.
Stage
Cancers are classified by a staging system (Stage I through Stage IV) which indicates how far cancer has spread in the body at the time of diagnosis. At what stage a breast cancer is diagnosed and treated plays a large part in whether or not a person will survive the disease.
The National Cancer Institute's (NCI's) statistics illustrate that the more advanced a patient's breast cancer at the time of diagnosis, the less likely it is that he or she will be alive five years later. For women with stage I (localized to the breast) have a 98.3 percent survival rate; stage II (spread to regional lymph nodes), 83.5 percent; stages III and IV (spread to distant areas of the body), 23.3 percent survival.
Age
Younger people do not necessarily fare better in their fight with breast cancer than older people. Because some breast cancers feed off the female hormones women produce in their younger years, women who are premenopausal can develop tumors that are more aggressive and less responsive to treatment than older women. ACS reports the five-year survival rate for women older than 40 is 89 percent, but for women younger than 40, it's 82 percent.
Very young women still have age on their side, however. NCI says only 1 percent of deaths in women age 20 to 34 are from breast cancer. The percentages increase as a woman gets older and peak just after the menopause transition years---accounting for 20.3 percent of deaths in women age 55 to 64.
Race
Mortality has either declined or remained steady among all racial and ethnic groups, but African-American women still have a much greater chance of dying from breast cancer than any other group. Their mortality rate is 36 percent higher than white women even though the incidence of breast cancer is higher in whites, reports ACS.
Socioeconomics
People who are poorer and/or lack health insurance are more likely to die from breast cancer, says ACS. The existence of additional illness, delays in diagnosis and substandard medical treatment all contribute to lower-income patients having lower survival rates.
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