Abstract
PURPOSE: The characteristics of patients with bilateral and unilateral breast cancer at the time of diagnosis or during follow-up have been compared, focusing on the differences in disease-free survival and overall survival between these groups. METHODS: A total of 1,947 patients diagnosed with invasive carcinoma were included in the study. 1876 (96.4%) of our patients had unilateral and 71 (3.6%) had bilateral breast cancer. Among the bilateral breast cancer patients n = 47 were metachronous, while n = 24 were synchronous. RESULTS: SBBC, which had the lowest OS duration, showed a statistically significant difference compared to MBCC, similar to that observed in unilateral breast cancer (p = 0.027). CONCLUSION: The fact that SBBC has the lowest survival rate despite more aggressive treatments should be considered a poor prognostic factor for survival on its own.