Fig. 1

Based on Rotterdam Breast Cancer data, estimated mortality rates per 1000 person-years for breast cancer patients who were aged 50 at primary surgery and were treated with hormonal therapy (solid lines) and without hormonal therapy (dotted lines). Left panel shows the mortality rates over time since surgery (time-scale \(t_1\)) for patients having relapse or metastasis (RM) at different time-points since surgery as well as for non-RM patients. Right panel shows the mortality rates for RM patients along the time since RM (time-scale \(t_2\))