Abstract P4-13-03: Variations in breast reconstruction rate in France according to patient and site characteristics: A nationwide retrospective study of nearly 20,000 patients
Authors: Regis C , Le J , Le Teuff G , Cucchi M , Boulanger L , Hannebicque K , Giard S , Chauvet M-P , Quemenr J , Ledeley M-C 
Published: February 2018

Background: Breast reconstruction (BR) for women who undergo mastectomy for cancer offers psychological benefits and improves quality of life. However its use remains limited, especially for women over 65 years, with a large degree of international variation. The aim of this study was to find out factors influencing the surgical decision of BR in France where cancer related healthcare costs are fully reimbursed.

Methods: We used the French medico-administrative database to identify all primary mastectomies for breast carcinoma in 2012 and studied the rate of immediate (IR) or delayed breast reconstruction (DR) up to December 2015.

Variations of BR rates were evaluated according to

- patient age, social deprivation index,

- profile of the hospital where the mastectomy was performed: type of hospital (cancer center, CC; university hospitals, UH; private, PrivH; or public, PubH), and hospital activity (surgical acts for breast cancer in 2012);

- disparities across administrative regions in terms of number of CC or UH, number of plastic surgeons, gynecologist-obstetrician surgeons and general surgeons in the region.

A hierarchical three-level logistic regression was used with SAS GLIMMIX to model the probability of BR taking into account clustering of observations (patients in hospitals, hospitals in regions). Splines were used to explore the functional form of the relationship between continuous variables and BR rate. Akaike information criterion was used for model selection.

Results: Among the 19,466 women who had a mastectomy in 2012, 5,328 (27.4%) subsequently had a BR: IR for 13.7% and DR for 13.7%. The BR rate significantly varied with age (p&lt;0.0001), resulting in a much smaller BR rate in patients older than 65 compared to younger (7.5% vs 42.1%, p&lt;0.0001). In case of BR, IR was more frequent than DR in older patients (66% of BR), whereas both were equally balanced before 65. BR rates decreased with increasing social deprivation index (from 32.7% to 21.5%, from the first to the fourth quartile of the distribution). BR rates significantly varied according to hospital type (35.0% in CC, 29.8% in UH, 25.9% in PrivH and 18.6% in PubH). BR rates were significantly lower in small activity hospital (varying from 13.4% in hospital with &lt;=50 annual breast surgery to 35.1% in hospitals with &gt;500), especially in older patients (varying from 3.1% to 10.3%). We also observed important heterogeneity of BR rates across administrative regions, but these variations were not explained by the number of CC or UH, the number of plastic surgeons, the number of gynecologist-obstetrician surgeons or the number of general surgeons in the region. In multivariate analysis, BR rate was significantly associated with age (p&lt;0.0001), social deprivation index (p&lt;0.0001), type of hospital (p=0.002) and hospital activity (p&lt;0.0001), with persistent heterogeneity across administrative regions.

Conclusions: We identified substantial variations in BR rates across the French hospitals. Controlling for possible confounders, older patients have less breast reconstruction. This apparent heterogeneity can be part of women choice, however it suggests unequal access to high quality procedures for older women with breast cancer.

Citation Format: Regis C, Le J, Le Teuff G, Cucchi M, Boulanger L, Hannebicque K, Giard S, Chauvet M-P, Quemenr J, Ledeley M-C. Variations in breast reconstruction rate in France according to patient and site characteristics: A nationwide retrospective study of nearly 20,000 patients [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 2017 San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium; 2017 Dec 5-9; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(4 Suppl):Abstract nr P4-13-03.