PHILADELPHIA Many women at high risk for breast or ovarian cancer are choosing to undergo surgery as a precautionary measure to decrease their cancer risk, according to a report in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
"Women have their breasts or ovaries removed based on their risk. It does not always happen immediately after counseling or a genetic test result and can take more than seven years for patients to decide to go forward with surgery," said lead researcher D. Gareth Evans, M.D. Evans is a consultant in clinical genetics at the Genesis Prevention Center, University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Trust and a professor at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom.
Evans and colleagues assessed the increase in risk-reduction surgery among women with breast cancer and evaluated the impact of cancer risk, timing and age.
Rate of increase was measured among 211 women with known unaffected BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation carriers. BRCA1 and BRCA2 are hereditary gene mutations that indicate an increased risk for developing breast cancer. Additionally, more than 3,500 women at greater than 25 percent lifetime risk of breast cancer without mutations also had a documented increase in risk-reduction surgery.
Women who had a biopsy after undergoing risk evaluation were twice as likely to choose a risk-reducing mastectomy. Forty percent of the women who were mutation carriers underwent bilateral risk-reducing mastectomy; 45 percent had bilateral risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy (surgical removal of ovaries). These surgeries are widely used by carriers of BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations to reduce the risk for breast and ovarian cancer.
Evaluated by gene type, bilateral risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy was more common in women who were BRCA1 gene carriers 52 percent had the surgery compared with 28 percent of the women who were BRCA2 gene car
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| Contact: Tara Yates tara.yates@aacr.org 267-646-0558 American Association for Cancer Research Source:Eurekalert |