Disparities in breast cancer presentation and treatment of older women, by insurance status.

e17516 Background: Disparities are known to exist in breast cancer outcomes by age and socioeconomic status (SES), but there is little data regarding these disparities in the elderly. We studied older women in North Carolina (NC) using insurance status as an indicator of SES. Methods: From the 1999-2002 NC Central Cancer Registry, we identified women age ≥65 years presenting with nonmetastatic breast cancer, having surgery within 60 days of diagnosis, no neoadjuvant therapy, and insured by Medicare only (M) or dual Medicaid/Medicare (dMM). Chi-square tests followed by Tukey Style Multiple Comparison of Proportions were used to compare baseline characteristics and treatment received. Multivariate analyses including age, race, Charlson comorbidity, tumor size, lymph node status (LN), ER/PR status, HER2 status, and relevant treatment components, were used to determine predictors of use of chemotherapy. Results: The study population, n=3088 with mean age 75 (SD 6.69) years, included 560 dMM and 2528 M insured...