Women with breast cancer who opt for a double mastectomy to beat the disease do not increase their chances of survival, new research shows.
Having both breasts removed did not extend patients’ lives any more than having cancerous lumps removed, followed by radiotherapy, the research found.
The findings are based on a study of 189,734 California women with the disease.
“We can now say that the average breast cancer patient who has bilateral mastectomy will have no better survival than the average patient who has lumpectomy plus radiation,” said Stanford University’s Allison Kurian, the lead scientist for the project.
Ten years after having both breasts removed, 18.8 percent of women had died, compared with 16.8 percent of those who had a lumpectomy, then radiation. The paper was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“A mastectomy is a major procedure that can require significant recovery time and may entail breast reconstruction, whereas a lumpectomy is much less invasive, with a shorter recovery period,” she said.
The women in the study were diagnosed with breast cancer at stages zero, one, two or three in one breast in California between 1998 and 2011.
During that time, more than half (55 percent) had surgery to remove malignant lumps then radiotherapy, almost 40 percent had one breast removed and the rest had a double mastectomy.
Those who opted for a double mastectomy were more likely to be white, aged under 40, better-off and have private medical insurance. The rate of women under 40 having the procedure soared from 3.6 percent in 1998 to 33 percent in 2011.
Overall, the proportion of women in the study having a double mastectomy rose from 2 percent in 1998 to 12.3 percent in 2011, an annual increase of 14.3 percent, the paper said. The highest proportion of women who died within 10 years was in those who chose to have one breast removed (20.1 percent).
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