Smoking is always associated to the increased risk of several cancers (lung, head and neck, esophagus, bladder and many others) and also affects one's response to ant-cancer treatments. BUT, it (smoking) does not result in more advanced stage diagnoses or aggressive breast cancers at the time of diagnosis - according to the result of an analysis of 35 years of data for more than 6,000 patients presented yesterday at the American Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology's 49th Annual Meeting in Los Angeles.

We hypothesized that tobacco use could result in more advanced stage or more aggressive breast cancer presentation, but that doesn't appear to be the case, said Matthew Abramowitz, M.D., a resident in the radiation oncology department at Fox Chase Cancer Center.

There is no good news about smoking, but since about 10 percent of our patients are smokers, this research provides us with some relief. The question that remains is will smoking affect their survival?

Duh! As if the not aggressive cancers is the less evil. Cancer is cancer is cancer.

And smoking is really bad cancer-wise and other wise. This isn't an excuse to smoke.

Find more details from EurekAlert.