Izmir Cancer Incidence and Data Collection Project has began in 1991 under the leadership of Izmir Cancer Observation and Supervision Center which is the first population based cancer registration center in Turkey. Cancer data of Ege University Hospital are collected by Ege University Fight Against Cancer, Practice and Research Center and have been included in this project. Within this project among 33592 cases of cancer which were diagnosed and treated during 1992-2003, 3897 (12.7%) of them were breast cancer and these cases were evaluated statistically.

Threethousand eighthundred thirty-one cases (98.3%) were female and 66 were (1.7%) male. The vast majority of male patients were between 60-69 years old and the female patients were between 45-54 years old which was a younger group than that of men. The most common histologic type in both sexes was invasive ductal carcinoma and the most common localization was the upper outer quadrant of the breast. One thousand ninety seven cases (34.6%) had stage I,II, 60.6% (1923 cases) had advanced and 4.8% (151 cases) had metastatic disease. When the residence of the patients and the stage of the disease were evaluated it was determined that the patients living outside Izmir had more advanced disease then the patients living in Izmir (p:0.014). When the residence of the patients was grouped as urban and rural it was determined that the patients from the rural areas had more advanced disease than the patients from the urban areas (p:0.01). When in situ breast cancer cases diagnosed either below or above 50 years were evaluated it was determined that the patients younger than 50 years old had a diagnosis of in situ breast cancer more than that of the patients older than 50 years old (p:0.04). Surgery was applied to 3687 patients (94.6%), radiotherapy to 1305 patients (33.3%) and chemotherapy to 1389 patients (35.6%). Ege University Hospital is a center to which most of the cancer patients in Aegean region refer, and our aim is to continue our leadership role in cancer registration, to improve the registration system and to collect data consistent with the world standarts thus determining the true cancer incidence and to make epidemiologic research.