ABSTRACT
The cancer ward at the Middlesex Hospital in London was among the first established anywhere in the world primarily for the treatment of cancer. In this retrospective study, Bloom et al. reviewed all records of breast cancer patients treated at Middlesex and identified 356 who had received no treatment, the first of these having presented in 1805. There was adequate information on 250 women to include them in the study, and histological material was available on 86 cases seen between 1902 and 1933. The median time between the initial symptoms, as reported by the patient, and death was 2.7 years. The longest interval was 18 years and 3 months. The survival rates at 3, 5, 10, and 15 years were 44%, 18%, 4%, and 1%, respectively. Five percent of the patients died of causes other than breast cancer. Retrospective grading of the tumors for which histological material was available demonstrate a correlation with grade and survival.
