Probabilities of Death From Breast Cancer and Other Causes Among Female Breast Cancer Patients

from that cancer and other causes in the presence of competing risks are optimal measures of prognosis and of mortality across demographic groups. We used data on breast cancer patients from the Surveillance, Epidemiol-ogy, and End Results (SEER) Program in a competing-risk analysis. Methods: We determined vital status and cause of death for 395 251 white and 35 259 black female patients with breast cancer diagnosed from January 1, 1973, through December 31, 2000, by use of SEER data. We calculated probabilities of death from breast cancer and other causes according to stage, race, and age at diagnosis; for cases diagnosed from January 1, 1990, to December 31, 2000, we also calculated some such proba-bilities according to tumor size and estrogen receptor (ER) status. All statistical tests were two-sided. Results