To the Editor The research letter by Stapleton et al¹ presented the age distribution of individuals with breast cancer by race and ethnicity for women between the ages of 40 and 75 years using data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) Program database. The letter concluded that the higher proportion of individuals with breast cancer at younger ages in minority populations suggests a need for earlier screening for minority women. However, the results presented did not account for the different age distributions of the populations considered. As a result, the authors used the wrong denominator to assess risk. Instead of considering the proportion of women in a particular age group and race/ethnicity diagnosed with breast cancer, they considered the proportion of all breast cancers within that race/ethnicity that occurred in a particular age group.

致编辑Stapleton等人的研究信¹通过使用“监测，流行病学和最终结果（SEER）计划”数据库中的数据，按种族和种族列出了40至75岁女性乳腺癌患者的年龄分布。该信的结论是，少数族裔人群中年龄较小的乳腺癌患者比例较高，这表明有必要对少数族裔妇女进行早期筛查。但是，提出的结果并未考虑所考虑人群的不同年龄分布。结果，作者使用了错误的分母来评估风险。他们没有考虑特定年龄组中女性的比例和诊断为乳腺癌的种族/民族，而是考虑了特定年龄组中该种族/民族中所有乳腺癌的比例。