CancerStats Key Facts breast cancer

How common is breast cancer?

- Breast cancer is now the most common cancer in the UK.

- Each year more than 44,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer, that’s more than 100 women a day.

- Each year around 300 men are diagnosed with breast cancer.

- Breast cancer rates have increased by more than 50% over the last twenty years.

- In the last ten years, breast cancer rates in the UK have increased by 12%.

- 8 in 10 breast cancers are diagnosed in women aged 50 and over.

- In England the NHS breast screening programme picks up around 14,000 cases of breast cancer each year.

- The NHS breast screening programme in England saves around 1,400 lives each year.

- Each year, in the European Union around 430,000 women are diagnosed with breast
cancer.

- Around 430,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in the European Union every
year.

- Worldwide, more than a million women are diagnosed with breast cancer every year.

- The highest rates of breast cancer occur in Northern Europe and North America and the
lowest rates are in parts of Africa and Asia.



How many people survive breast cancer?

- More women are surviving breast cancer than ever before.

- Breast cancer survival rates have been improving for more than twenty years.

- In the 1970s around 5 out of 10 breast cancer patients survived beyond five years. Now
it's 8 out of 10.

- Breast cancer survival rates are significantly higher among women from the most
affluent areas compared to women living in the most deprived areas.

- Breast cancer survival rates are better the earlier the cancer is diagnosed.

- Around 9 out of 10 of women diagnosed with stage I breast cancer survives beyond five
years. This drops to around 1 out of 10 diagnosed with stage IV.



How many people die from breast cancer?

- Each year in the UK more than 12,000 women and around 100 men die from
breast cancer.

- Each year there are around 1,400 deaths from breast cancer in women
under 50.

- More than half of breast cancer deaths are women aged over 70.

- Since peaking in the late 1980s breast cancer death rates have fallen by a third.

- In the last ten years death rates for breast cancer have fallen by almost a
fifth.

- Breast cancer is now the second most common cause of death from cancer
in women after lung.



What causes breast cancer?

- Women with a mother, sister or daughter diagnosed with breast cancer have an 80%
higher risk of being diagnosed with breast cancer themselves.

- Risk increases with the number of first-degree relatives diagnosed with breast cancer,
but even so, eight out of nine breast cancers occur in women without a family history of
breast cancer.

- Obesity increases risk of postmenopausal breast cancer by up to 30%.

- Women using hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for five years or longer have a 35%
increased risk of breast cancer.

- Use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) causes approximately 2,000 cases of breast
cancer in the UK each year.

- The risk of breast cancer in current users of oral contraceptives is increased by around
a quarter.

- Drinking as little as one pint of beer or one glass of wine a day increases risk of breast
cancer by more than 7%.

- A more active lifestyle reduces breast cancer risk.


Source:
www.cancerresearchuk.org/