Breast Cancer Survivors with Functional Limitations Have Poor Prognosis

Women who have difficulty performing normal activities of daily living after an initial treatment for breast cancer have reduced overall survival compared with survivors without functional limitations, results of a long-term study indicate.

 

“Our study provides evidence of why it is important to develop interventions that improve physical function, to mitigate the adverse effects of physical limitations,” said lead author Dejana Braithwaite, PhD, of the University of California San Francisco.

 

In the study published online in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute, she and her associates studied the long-term prognostic role of functional limitations in a cohort of 2202 women who participated in the Life After Cancer Epidemiology study. The women provided information on body functions involving endurance, strength, muscular range of motion, and small muscle dexterity after initial adjuvant therapy.

 

The majority of the women were early-stage breast cancer survivors, and their median age was 57 years at the time of entrance to the study. Thirty-nine percent of the subjects reported one or more physical limitations at study entry. Older women and those who were overweight or obese had more functional limitations.

 

During a median follow-up period of 9 years, 112 women died of competing (non-breast cancer) causes and 157 of breast cancer. Multivariate analysis showed that functional limitations increased the risk of death from all causes and from competing causes but not from breast cancer.

 

The authors advise that adding assessment of functional status to clinical screening of breast cancer patients may help to identify groups that are at high risk of poor prognosis, which would allow “targeting of functionally impaired patients to improve quality and length of life.”