Ward ZJ, Atun R, Hricak H, et al. - Global 5-year net breast cancer survival may improve by nearly 15 percentage points with comprehensive scale-up of treatment and imaging modalities, and improvements in quality of care.

• A microsimulation model of global cancer survival, which accounts for the availability and stage-specific survival impact of specific treatment modalities, imaging modalities, and quality of cancer care, was used for this simulation-based analysis simulating 5-year net survival for women with newly diagnosed breast cancer in 200 countries and territories in 2018.

• For women diagnosed with breast cancer, global 5-year net survival was 67·9% overall in 2018.

• Low-income (3·5% [0·4–10·0]) and high-income (87·0% [85·6–88·4]) countries had almost a 25-times difference in global 5-year net survival.

• The largest survival gains are expected globally with scaling up access to surgery alone among individual treatment modalities, and the largest global impact is expected with scaling up CT alone among imaging modalities.

• Seventy percent of the total potential gains could be achieved by improving scale-up of traditional modalities (surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, ultrasound, and x-ray) and quality-of-care, with substantial impact in LMICs, presenting a more feasible pathway to enhance breast cancer survival in these settings even without the advantages of future investments in targeted therapy and advanced imaging.