Well yes, according to a Spanish study, women who have been diagnosed with invasive breast cancer have a 39 percent higher risk of developing another tumor in a different part of the body. This could be due to the cancers having similar risk factors or the side effect of the treatment received.
As María José Sánchez, co-author of the article and director of the Granada Cancer Registry, explains to the scientific news agency SINC, “ this is the first population study in Spain to evaluate this associated risk ”. And the results have been more than interesting.
According to their data, published in the specialized journal Gynecologic Oncology , the risk of a second cancer was much higher in the first five years after breast cancer diagnosis, almost 3.5 times more than for other women. However, after this period ” no significant increase in risk was found more than five years after diagnosis, ” explains one of the study authors.
To reach these conclusions, the researchers studied 5,897 cases of invasive breast cancer diagnosed between 1985 and 2007 in Granada, among which 314 of them had developed a second primary cancer. On the other hand, 22,814 cancer cases (except breast) from all over Spain were studied during the same period and 171 cases that had developed a second breast cancer were identified.
According to data from the Eurocare study, relative survival over five years has increased in Spain to over 80 percent . As Sánchez explains, “These data reveal that the number of women who survive breast cancer will increase over time and that, therefore, it is necessary to assess their risk of developing a second cancer in relation to women in the population. general”. Hence the importance of this recent study.
