Women With Breast Cancer Gene Favor Preventive Mastectomy

MONDAY, March 9 (HealthDay News) -- Women who know they carry a gene that puts them at higher risk of breast cancer tend to opt for preventive mastectomy, a new study concludes.

Several type of risk management strategies are available to women found to have a mutated BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene, which is known to elevate a woman's risk of breast cancer. These range from simply having more frequent screening exams to the preemptive removal of a breast.

Researchers at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston interviewed women who were tested for the mutation. They researchers found that roughly two-thirds of women who tested positive for the BRCA mutation believed that a preventive mastectomy was the most effective way to prevent breast cancer from developing or reduce their worry about the disease.

Only 40% of women who tested negative for the mutation saw the surgery as the best preventative and only a third thought the procedure was the best way to alleviate their worry about having breast cancer.

"Health care providers and genetic counselors must take this into account when assessing a woman's needs at the time of genetic testing and results disclosure," the authors wrote in the April 15 issue of Cancer.

The researchers found that 81% of women who saw preventive mastectomy as the best way to reduce cancer risk ended up having the procedure after testing positive. Slightly more (84.2%) had the surgery if they viewed it as the only way to reduce worry about possible breast cancer.

-- Kevin McKeever

SOURCE: American Cancer Society, news release, March 9, 2009

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