Studies show more patients are choosing mastectomies, even though women are just as likely to survive if they have smaller, breast-conserving surgeries.
Tuesday that she had early-stage cancer in only one breast and underwent deuce lumpectomies. Second surgeries aren't uncommon. Up to 25% of women who take lumpectomies demand a second base surgery to remove extra cancerous tissue, says Isabelle Bedrosian of Houston's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
, for example, plant 18% of women with the mutations took this approach. More than half the women had their ovaries removed, which reduces the risk of exposure of both breast and ovarian cancers by removing the body's major source of estrogen.
Other women decide to undergo frequent screening with MRIs, or magneitc resonance imaging, instead of preventive operating theatre, says David Johnson of the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville.
Doctors don't recommend MRIs for all women, says Minetta Liu, a chest cancer medical specialist at Georgetown's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. For most women, doctors advise getting a yearbook mammogram beginning at age 40.
Liu says insurance normally covers MRIs for women at high risk: those with a close congenator with chest cancer, such as a mother or sister; those with one of the genetic mutations; or those whose danger of breast cancer is more than 20%, based on a rating system called the Gail model.
While MRIs ar far more sensitive than mammograms, they also increase the risk of exposure that a woman will have a mastectomy, according a study from the Mayo Clinic.
Mayo researchers found that breast cancer patients who underwent MRIs were more likely than others to have a bosom removed instead of a lumpectomy. That may be because MRIs are more likely to pick up second tumors in women who are already scheduled for oR, Liu says.
In fact, in 16% of cases, MRIs find extra cancer in the affected breast. And in about 3% of cases, the MRI finds cancer in the diametrical breast, says Julie Gralow, a breast cancer technical at the University of Washington.
Growing numbers game of women are opting for double mastectomies, level when they have cancer only in one � even when they lack the risk of infection factors of women like Applegate. Among women with cancer in one chest, the peril of development a tumour in the other breast is less than 1% a year, says Isabelle Bedrosian of Houston's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
In 2003, 11% of women having a mastectomy in one breast opted to have surgeons off their unaffected breast, as well, according to a study of 152,755 patients published last yr in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. That's more than double the rate in 1998.
"Women are under the misconception that taking the other breast will keep them from getting breast cancer," Bedrosian says. "But taking the other breast has no impingement on survival from the original cancer."
Bedrosian notes that breast genus Cancer patients rump reduce their risk of a return without surgical operation by taking hormone therapy.
Liu notes that mastectomy crataegus oxycantha seem more attractive today because of improvements in reconstructive surgery.
Women have several reconstructive options, which lav be performed at the time of mastectomy, Golshan says. Insurance generally covers the procedures.
Doctors can restore the breast using a flap of skin from the stomach, back or buttocks, or with silicone or saline solution implants, Golshan says.
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