A new study finds that despite popular belief, double mastectomies are NOT the most effective
option for women with breast cancer
Hey guys, Tara here for Dnews - and you may recall in 2013, Angelina Jolie made headlines
for publicizing her decision to get a preventative double mastectomy.
Her reasoning, she said, in addition to having a family history of breast cancer, was that
she was born with the BRCA1 gene mutation, which puts her at a very high risk for developing
breast and ovarian cancer.
A lot of people applauded her decision to have that surgery, and it certainly raised
awareness about the fight for breast cancer.
But was it really the right decision?
And can preventative surgery, actually prevent breast cancer?
According to a new study, the answer - is no.
The Journal of the American Medical Association published an article earlier this week - one
of the largest studies ever conducted on this topic - stating that women with breast cancer
who opt for double mastectomy, don’t increase their chances of survival any more than women
who undergo a single lumpectomy, followed by radiation.
Now for those of you who aren’t familiar, a double mastectomy is when they literally
remove all of the breast tissue from both breasts, including the nipple and everything,
to prevent the spread of cancerous tissue.
It is an extremely painful surgery, not to mention the emotional distress of losing such
a fundamental part of your womanhood.
It’s devastating in pretty much every sense of the word.
So typically, it’s only performed in extreme cases.
But still, a lot of women do opt for it - under the assumption that it could prevent future
cancer.
A lumpectomy, on the other hand, is usually performed on women who have a single localized
tumor, less than 4cm in diameter.
The basic formula is doctors extract the tumor, and then the patient undergoes radiation therapy
for anywhere from 1-2 months.
Surgically, it is far less invasive than a double mastectomy - but there is still a lot
of scarring.
Thankfully, breast reconstruction is available, whichever route you choose.
And the increased availability of those options, could explain why the rate of double mastectomies
has risen so sharply over the past 15 years.
In 1998, only 2% of women with breast cancer opted for complete removal of both breasts.
But by 2011, that number rose to 12.3%.
So for this study, researchers followed 189,000 women in California with breast cancer, for
a period of 10 years, to see who actually fared better from which surgical option.
55% of those women had lumpectomies followed by radiation, 40% had only one breast removed,
and the remaining 5% had both breasts removed.
After a 10 year follow-up, researchers noted that 16.8% of women who opted for a lumpectomy
had died, compared to 18.8% of women who had both breasts removed.
Statistically, that’s not a significant difference.
But what’s interesting, is that women who only had one of their breasts removed, actually
had the highest mortality rate, of 20.1%.
The author of the study, Dr. Allison Kurian, says this doesn’t mean we should discount
double mastectomy surgery, since it is still necessary for certain cases.
But she does warn against women unnecessarily losing both of their breasts.
Naturally, I would assume anyone undergoing that kind of surgery, has carefully weighed
all of the risks and benefits - but it’s still interesting to see that something which
seems like it would be far more effective, really isn’t any better than the current
standard therapy.
While we’re on the topic of devastating diseases, I wanna let you guys know that I
host another show here on Discovery, called TestTube - which is kinda like Dnews, but
for current events.
Last week, we filmed an episode on why the world may never fully eradicate infectious
diseases.
So if you’re curious about that, and you’d like to know more - just click the link on
your screen to watch.
In the meantime, if you have any questions, comments, anything you wanna say about THIS
episode, leave em in the comments below - otherwise, thanks for watching!