Volume of breast cancer surgeries tied to outcome

NEW YORK, Mar 13 (Reuters) The number of breast cancer surgeries that a hospital performs seems to be associated with the likelihood of subsequently dying from breast cancer, Milwaukee-based researchers have found.

On average, they report in the American Journal of Public Health, outcomes are better when the procedure is performed in high-volume hospitals.

Dr. Mary Ann Gilligan and colleagues at the Medical College of Wisconsin note that studies of breast cancer patients treated in New York State and California suggest that treatment in a high-volume hospital was associated with better survival rates at five years.

To investigate further, the researchers studied data on 11,225 Medicare patients who had undergone surgery for early-stage breast cancer between 1994 and 1996 at 457 different hospitals, nationwide.

After an average of about 5 years, women treated in high-volume hospitals were 20 per cent less likely to have died of breast cancer than those who received treatment in a low-volume hospital. Also, the death rate due to any cause was 17 per cent lower.

However, those were across-the-board figures, and some hospitals did better than others. ''In terms of 5-year survival, approximately 26 per cent of low-volume hospitals and 37 per cent of medium-volume hospitals outperformed the median-high-volume hospital,'' the researchers found.

Overall, these findings are consistent with those reported by investigators in New York and California, Gilligan's group concludes, and ''further work investigating the aspects of hospital volume that contribute to increased survival is warranted.'' REUTERS RL KP1010