Evaluation of patients' care pathway before the first consultation in the radiotherapy department of Centre Hospitalier Nganda (Kinshasa) for breast cancer treatment

Introduction: That study assesses the care pathway to detect the reasons why the patients reached the radiotherapy department of Centre Hospitalier Nganda with advanced breast cancer.
Material and Methods: We conducted a descriptive and analytical cross-sectional study from March 2024 to June 2024. We included all new breast cancer patients in our center. A p-value ≤ 0.05 was considered statistically significant for all analyses. An average comparison between quantitative variables was performed using the non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test.
Results and discussion: We enrolled 54 patients. The mean age was 53.13 ± 11.94 years and the median age was 51 years. A breast mass dominated the clinical picture in 87.07% of cases. Regarding the first medical contact, 77.78% of patients sought care in a conventional medical center. During the treatment, 31.48% of patients had received traditional pharmacopeia and 16.67% had undergone holistic treatment. Regarding radiotherapy indications, 14.81% of patients had no relevant indication for irradiation. The average time between the first symptoms and the radiotherapy consultation was 12.9 ± 9.2 months. There was a statistically significant positive correlation between the time from first symptoms to radiotherapy consultation and the staging of the disease (P-value=0.023). Patients who sought care at home (OR: 1.1; 95% CI 0.13-6.89) or in a conventional medical center (OR: 1.49; 95% CI 0.35-7.77) were all at risk of reaching radiotherapy with an advanced disease.
Conclusion: The care pathway of breast cancer patients has a global impact on the outcome and also on the prognosis.