08/30/2024
DOUBLE MASTECTOMY MAY OFFER NO SURVIVAL BENEFIT TO WOMEN WITH BREAST CANCER
University of Toronto, July 26, 2024 (Medical Xpress)
Women who are diagnosed with breast cancer in one breast, even in the early stages, sometimes opt for a double mastectomy, due to the fear that the cancer will migrate to the other breast.
But that decision may not offer any real benefit in terms of survival, an exhaustive new study of more than 600,000 patients tracked for two decades has found.
Canadian researchers report that while having an unaffected breast removed did lower the odds of cancer appearing in that area, that did not translate to any change in the patient's odds of death from breast cancer.
Outcomes were followed for three groups of about 36,000 women each, separated by treatment type. One group got the least radical type of breast cancer surgery, called a lumpectomy; the second group opted to have only the affected breast removed (unilateral surgery); and the third group decided on double mastectomy.
Overall, the risk of a woman with breast cancer developing a cancer later in the second breast was small, just under 7%.
But surprisingly, the reduction in second breast cancers among women who'd opted for double mastectomy offered no benefit in terms of breast cancer survival.
Over the 20 years of the study, deaths from breast cancer were similar across all groups: 3,077 (8.5%) of women in the lumpectomy group, 3,269 (9%) in the unilateral mastectomy group, and 3,062 (8.5%) in the double mastectomy group, the researchers found.
