Forecasting Breast Cancer Cases Requiring Radiotherapy At A Teaching Hospital In Nepal

Objective: The aim of this study was to determine the trends and to estimate the future load of patients with breast cancer requiring radiotherapy at Manipal Teaching Hospital, Pokhara, Nepal.Materials and Methods: A retrospective study was carried out on the data collected from the treatment records of patients who were treated with radiotherapy at the department of Radiation Oncology at Manipal Teaching Hospital (MTH), Pokhara, between September 2000 and December 2008. Descriptive statistics and statistical modelling were used for the analysis and the forecasting of data.Results: Seventy patients were found to have been treated with radiotherapy for breast cancer during the study period. The patients' mean age was 49.9 years (95% CI: 47.6, 52.3). Curative treatment was given to 80% and palliative treatment to the remaining 20% of the patients. Patients from the age group of 45-64 years were more likely to receive curative 76.2% radiotherapy. The compliance to treatment was 100% among the age group of 25-44 years and 90.5% among the group of 45-64 years, as compared to only 66% among patients older than 65 years. (p = 0.03). The number of patients receiving radiotherapy for breast cancer showed a pattern of increasing trend. Excluding the constant term from the equation, the cubic model was the best fitted with R-2 = 0.95, p = 0.001 for the forecasting of breast cancer cases. Using this model, the number of breast cancer cases treated with radiotherapy at the hospital by the year 2015 was estimated to be 194.Conclusion: Breast cancer cases in Nepal show an increasing trend and treatment facilities are bound to be hard pressed in providing the necessary health care to the public. Nepal should adopt better strategies for the early detection of the disease and improvise on the resources required for the treatment of this malady.