Professor Arnold Hill:

To put it in perspective, young breast cancer at that age - we would say 30 years of age is very young - is very rare. We would see a small number of those each year. The factors that contribute to outcome in breast cancer are the same in a 30-year-old as in an 80-year-old. The two most important factors are the size of the tumour and whether the lymph nodes under the arm are involved with cancer. They are the two most important factors that will determine the outcome. The outcome for a 30-year-old with a very small tumour and a 30-year-old with a very large tumour will be predicated by those two important features of their cancer, which are the size of the tumour and the presence of lymph node status. Age itself does not say that the outcome is particularly worse. The difficulty is that sometimes a 30-year-old may present later but that is down to the individual.