Is pre-menopausal breast cancer more likely to be fatal than post-menopausal breast cancer?
Is pre-menopausal breast cancer a different kind of cancer than post-menopausal breast cancer? There is no evidence at this point that pre-menopausal disease is different in nature from post-menopausal disease. But, among all the different breast cancers, some are more aggressive than others. As with many other cancers, the likelihood of having an aggressive cancer is higher with cancers diagnosed at young ages as compared with those diagnosed at older ages. For example, there is evidence that ON AVERAGE tumor doubling size is significantly faster in breast cancer diagnosed before age 50 than in breast cancer diagnosed after age 50. Still, in both age groups, some breast cancers have a fairly benign course after initial treatment and others metastasize aggressively. There simply are better odds of having the less aggressive kind of breast cancer as one gets older.
