Three Cases of Elderly Women with Breast Cancer treated with Non-operative Methods

The mainstay of treatment in primary breast cancer is still a radical mastectomy. In the case of advanced breast cancer, preoperative chemotherapy is an alternative treatment method to induce surgical therapy. Although the number of elderly patients with breast cancer is increasing, the knowledge about the possible differences in the biology and clinical outcomes of breast cancer according to age is limited. In addition, elderly patients have difficulties with surgical treatment because of the higher rate of coincident systemic illness, high anesthetic risk and high rate of operation refusals for an operation than those in young patients. As it was well known that elderly patients have better prognoses than younger patients and more estrogen and progesterone receptors in tumor tissue, it was expected that oral chemo-endocrine and radiation therapy could be an alternative in elderly patients who refuse surgery. Good results were experienced in our three elderly breast cancer patients when applying these non-surgical treatments.