Statistics and research - NBOCC Clinical Best Practice

From Breast cancer in Australia: an overview, 2006
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The number of women diagnosed with breast cancer in Australia increased from 5,318 in 1983 to 12,027 in 2002. It is projected that there will be 13,261 women diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006 and 14,818 in 2011.
Breast cancer is the most common cancer experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, but the incidence rate is lower than for the non-Indigenous population.
Breast cancer in males is rare. The number of new cases of breast cancer in males per year increased from 43 in 1983 to 84 in 2002.
The average age of first diagnosis was 60 years for a woman and 66 years for a man in 2002.

A woman's risk of dying from breast cancer before the age of 85 has been declining, from a 1 in 29 risk in 1983 to a 1 in 36 risk in 2004.
There were 2,641 female deaths and 20 male deaths due to breast cancer in 2004.
The age-standardised rate of death due to breast cancer among women has fallen markedly, from 31.0 deaths per 100,000 females in 1990 to 23.4 deaths per 100,000 females in 2004.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women had 9% higher rates of breast cancer mortality than the Australian female population as a whole, based on age-standardised rates for the 2000-2004 period for Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Northern Territory registered deaths.
Australia's death rate from breast cancer was lower than the rates for New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States of America.

For women, there was a significant increase in relative survival after diagnosis of breast cancer between 1982-1986 and 1998-2002. One-year relative survival increased from 93.2% to 96.7% and five-year relative survival increased from 70.9% to 86.6%.

Prevalence in 2002 was 113,801 females and 729 males alive who had been diagnosed with breast cancer in the previous 20 years.

In the 2001 National Health Survey, 12.2% of women aged 50-59 years, 11.2% of those aged 60-69 and 27.9% of those 70 years and over reported that they had never had a mammogram.
Participation in the BreastScreen Australia screening program in 2002-2003 was 56.1% in the target age group of 50-69 years. There were 1,618,306 women screened in 2002-2003.
The BreastScreen Australia program detected 10,416 invasive cancers in women screened from 1999 to 2001.

In 2003-04 the most common procedures for female patients with a principal diagnosis of breast cancer were Excision of lesion of breast with 8,930 separations, followed by Simple mastectomy with 4,817 separations and Chemotherapy administration with 1,913 separations.
In 2003-04 the most common procedures for male patients with a principal diagnosis of breast cancer were Simple mastectomy with 89 separations, followed by Excision of lesion of breast with 19 separations and Chemotherapy administration with 8 separations.

Total expenditure on breast cancer was $241 million in 2000-01. Of this, $96 million was spent on population screening mammography, $72 million on hospital admitted patients, $21 million on out-of-hospital medical costs and $27 million on pharmaceuticals requiring a prescription.
In 2000-01 breast cancer had an estimated lifetime treatment cost of $11,897.