Hospital admissions for breast cancer fell by a third between 1997 and 2004, according to a new report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The decline reflects, in part, the shift to outpatient facilities for breast cancer surgeries, plus the growing use of breast-conserving operations such as lumpectomies, which are typically performed on an outpatient basis.
The hospitalization rate for women with breast cancer dropped from 90 per 100,000 women to slightly fewer than 61 per 100,000 women during the period, and the number of hospital stays for the disease declined from about 125,000 to 90,000. The study also found that:
These statistics are from the Nationwide Inpatient Sample, a database of hospital inpatient stays that is nationally representative of all short-term, non-Federal hospitals. The data are drawn from hospitals that comprise 90 percent of all discharges in the United States and include all patients, regardless of insurance type as well as the uninsured. For more data, go to Hospital Stays for Breast Cancer, 2004: HCUP Statistical Brief #15, at http://www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb15.pdf.