When breast cancer appears in women in their 80s the condition often progresses very slowly. Even without treatment it may be sometime before it causes problems.

Even so, it is worth having treatment because as the cancer progresses it will eventually cause unpleasant symptoms. These might be either ulceration, discharge and bleeding from the actual growth in the breast, or pain and other problems resulting from the spread of the disease elsewhere. Treatment will often prevent these complications or significantly delay their onset.

It might help to find out why your aunt does not want treatment. She may be anxious or frightened about the treatment. Visits to hospital, surgery (maybe even a mastectomy) and the inconvenience and side effects of radiotherapy or chemotherapy can all be alarming prospects for anyone and especially for the elderly.

If your aunt is frightened about what the treatment may involve it might help to explain that often treatment for breast cancer in older women is very simple. It might only involve taking a tablet, like tamoxifen, or combining this with a relatively minor operation.

By talking to a specialist your aunt will find out what will be involved and can think it over. If she speaks to a specialist she still has the right to refuse treatment but she might find that what is recommended is less worrying, than what she had imagined.

It may also be worth having a word with your aunt's GP to see if they would visit her and discuss the possibility of treatment and possibly start her on tamoxifen. She could take this at home, with very little in the way of side effects, and there would still be a good chance that this would control her cancer for a long time.