The relationship between the predicted risk of death and psychosocial functioning among women with early-stage breast cancer.

Purpose: Many women with early-onset breast cancer experience adverse psychological sequelae which impact on their quality of life. We sought to correlate levels of anxiety and cancer-related distress in women with breast cancer shortly after surgery and one year after treatment with the estimated risk of death.
Methods: We studied 596 women with Stage I to III breast cancer. For each woman we estimated the five-year risk of death based on SEER data from 2010 to 2019. For each woman we measured anxiety and cancer-related distress levels shortly after surgery and one year later.
Results: The mean estimated five-year survival was 95%. At one week post-surgery, 59% of women had a clinically significant level of anxiety and 74% had a clinically significant level of cancer-related distress. There was no correlation between the objective risk of death and the level of anxiety or distress, at one week or at one year.
Conclusions: Many women diagnosed with early-stage breast cancers experience significant levels of anxiety and distress. The emotional response to a breast cancer diagnosis is not related to the risk of death per se and other factors should be explored.