ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Public Health Policy
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1629401
This article is part of the Research TopicTransforming Surgical Care in the Global South: Enhancing Quality and AccessibilityView all 3 articles
Ten-Year Survival in Early-Stage Breast Cancer Patients in a Comprehensive Breast Cancer Care Program in India
Provisionally accepted
Priyansh Nathani1,2Parth Tailor3Prashant Bhandarkar4
Priti Patil4Pratima Pimpalkar5Niranjna Swaminathan6Riya Sawhney2
Nobhojit Roy7*
Anita Gadgil1- 1World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Emergency, Critical and Operative Care, Program for Global Surgery & Trauma, The George Institute for Global Health, New Delhi, India
- 2Systems for Trauma And Blood Lab, Program in Global Surgery and Social Change, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, United States
- 3Research & Analytics, Freelance Consultant, Vadodara, India
- 4Department of Statistics, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) Hospital, Mumbai, India
- 5Department of Surgical Oncology, Inlaks and Budhrani Hospital, Sadhu Vaswani Mission's Medical Complex, Pune, India
- 6Taylor’s University Lakeside Campus, Subang Jaya, Malaysia
- 7Dept of Surgery, Karolinska Institutet (KI), Solna, Sweden
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Breast cancer accounted for 21.9% of all cancer deaths among women in India in 2020. Fifty seven percent of the breast cancers in India are detected at advanced stages. The lack of adequate resources for diagnosis and treatment adds to the delay and reduces survival. The clinical stage at diagnosis is the most important prognostic factor. Increased cancer awareness, early diagnosis, and affordable and accessible treatment facilities have been recommended for clinical downstaging and improved survival in low-and middle-income countries including India. We implemented a comprehensive breast care program based on these recommendations. This study explores the long-term survival outcomes of patients diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer (EBC) in an early detection program within a universal health coverage (UHC) scheme. This is a cohort study of women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer under the UHC scheme between 2008 and 2018. The follow-up was done through electronic medical records, in-person clinic visits, and telephone calls. The primary outcomes were five-and ten-year overall survival and disease-free survival. A total of 185 patients who presented with EBC were recruited among 254 incident breast cancer cases throughout the study period (72.8%). The average overall survival was 123 months. Five-year overall and disease-free survival were 85.2% and 84.6% respectively. Tenyear overall and disease-free survival were 79.0% and 76.2% respectively. This study underscores the importance of early detection in breast cancer. It also demonstrates that five-and ten-year survival rates better than those reported in Indian cancer registries are achievable through comprehensive cancer care and UHC.
Keywords: Priyansh Nathani: Writing -Original draft preparation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Project administration, Parth Tailor: Methodology, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing -Original draft preparation, Prashant Bhandarkar: Methodology, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing -Reviewing and Editing, Priti Patil: Methodology, Formal analysis, Data curation, Writing -Reviewing and Editing, Pratima Pimpalkar: Conceptualization, Writing -Reviewing and Editing, Niranjana S: Writing -Reviewing and Editing, Riya Sawhney: Writing -Reviewing and Editing, Nobhojit Roy: Conceptualization, Writing -Reviewing and Editing
Received: 15 May 2025; Accepted: 22 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Nathani, Tailor, Bhandarkar, Patil, Pimpalkar, Swaminathan, Sawhney, Roy and Gadgil. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Nobhojit Roy, Dept of Surgery, Karolinska Institutet (KI), Solna, 400094, Sweden
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.