Breast cancer is a major cause of morbidity and mortality in elderly women. Each year about 50 percent of the 185,000 new cases of breast cancer in the USA occur in women younger than 65 years of age. The risk of developing breast cancer is much greater than dying of it. Among white women, 6.53 percent and 4.7 percent of black women younger than 65 years develop breast cancer, but only 1.53 and 1.14, respectively, die of it. Breast cancer in men, which also increases with age, accounts for 1 percent of all new cases.
Breast cancers have the same clinical characteristics in elderly women as in younger women.
Cancer is usually suspected when changes are observed on mammography or when breast lesion is seen or felt. Lesions usually can be felt as firm nodules with the breast. Ulceration may occur, and lesions within or near the nipple may produce discharge. Sometimes, breast cancer is discovered only after metastatic lesions cause bone fractures, neurologic changes, hypercalcemia, liver failure, or ascites.