[Survival study of breast cancer patients treated at the hospital of the Federal University in Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil].

This retrospective hospital-based study aimed to describe health conditions and to estimate the survival of 252 patients diagnosed with breast cancer and treated at the Mastology Outpatient Clinic at the University Hospital of the Federal University in Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, from 1980 to 2000. Analysis followed the Kaplan-Meier and Cox model. Mean age was 54, and 73.4% of the patients had a histological diagnosis of invasive ductal carcinoma, 63.9% showed no lymph node involvement, and 57.6% were clinical stage II. At the end of the study, 64.7% were alive and free of breast cancer and 5.1% had died of other causes. Five-year survival was 87.7% for all women, and prognostic factors associated with survival were tumor size (HR = 12.03; > 5cm), lymph node involvement (HR = 3.08; N1) and number (HR = 4.66; None), and estrogen (HR = 0.34) and c-erbB-2 (HR = 2.51) receptors. Based on the results, intensive awareness-raising campaigns are vitally important for implementing breast cancer screening to achieve early diagnosis.