Prophylactic Mastectomy: The Newest Trend in Cancer Prevention?
It sounds crazy: removing both of your breasts when you don’t even have cancer? Who would do that? Well, lots of women, actually. The availability of genetic testing to evaluate breast cancer risk is giving many women a preview of things to come by letting them know exactly what their chances are of developing hereditary breast cancer.
Only 30,000 of more than 250,000 American women estimated to carry a mutation in BRCA1 or a related gene, BRCA2, have so far been tested. But their numbers have doubled in the last two years, and with a sharp increase in genetic testing, are expected to double again in the coming one.
About a third opt for preventive mastectomies that remove the tissue where the breast cancer develops. A majority have their ovaries removed, halving their breast cancer odds while decreasing the risk of highly lethal ovarian cancer, to which they are also prone. Some take drugs that ward off breast cancer. Others hope that frequent checkups will catch the cancer early, or that they will beat the odds.
Their decisions, which require weighing an inborn risk against other life priorities, are highly individual. But with DNA forecasts of many other conditions on their way, BRCA carriers offer the first clues for how to reckon with a serious disease that may never arise — and with the family turmoil that nearly always does. *
Read the story of one woman, 33-year-old Deborah Lindner, who opted for a double mastectomy after learning that she, unlike her sister, had inherited her mother’s defective BRCA1 gene.
Also worth a read: Study Finds Rise in Choice of Double Mastectomies
What do you think? Would you opt for a mastectomy on the chance of developing cancer? Would you request a double mastectomy when only one breast was affected by cancer? Share your opinions in the comments.
Tags: bcra1, bcra2, Breast cancer, genetic-testing, hereditary, inherited, mastectomy, preventive, prophylactic, woman, women, Womens-HealthRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Awareness, Body, Cancer, Controversial issues, Prevention, Women's Issues
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