[Survival of women with breast cancer, of a city in the south of Brazil].

A retrospective cohort study was carried out aiming to evaluate the survival of 655 women with breast cancer, seen in the Single Health System, Joinville, Santa Catarina, Brazil. For the analysis of survival, the method of Kaplan-Meier and Cox model was applied. The survival according to the staging of women was significantly different in accordance with the results of the test of Log-rank Test. The rate of risk of instantaneous death between the stages I/II, I/III and I/IV was 3.26, 15.40 and 25.51, respectively. These findings are in consonance with literature data, and indicate that the staging is a variable that explains the differences in the survival among women with breast cancer.