BREAST CANCER MORTALITY IN ELDERLY WOMEN IN SOUTHERN BRAZIL: AN OVERVIEW FOR THE PERIOD 1996 TO 2020

Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among women worldwide. Despite decades of medical initiatives and public policies, the disease’s mortality rates remain high in Brazil. The aim of this article is to analyze breast cancer mortality in Southern Brazil among elderly women aged 60 to 80 years or older, over the period 1996–2020. Data were drawn from the Mortality Information System (SIM) of the Department of Informatics of the Unified Health System (Datasus), in accordance with the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), and from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). Breast cancer is considered the most common type among women in almost all Brazilian regions, except in the North, where cervical cancer ranks first.