BRCA2 gene
Weighing Surgical Options for Breast Cancer
Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins
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An increasing number of women with cancer in one breast are choosing to have both breasts surgically removed in hopes of reducing the chance of developing cancer in the unaffected breast. But does this approach—called bilateral, or double, mastectomy—really improve the odds of survival? A new NIH-funded study indicates that, for the vast majority of women, it does not [1].
A research team led by Allison Kurian, an oncologist at Stanford University School of Medicine, and Scarlett Gomez, an epidemiologist at the Cancer Prevention Institute of California in Fremont, used the California Cancer Registry to study the 10-year survival outcomes of patients diagnosed with early-stage cancer (stages 0–III) in one breast, between 1998 and 2011.
