Authorities are discovering an alarming new trend in breast cancer and the patients who suffer from it, and it is a cause for concern in the medical community.
A huge new development has affected women with breast cancer, and it could lead to a dramatic change in how it is treated in the future: they’re getting double mastectomies, even when the cancer is found in only one breast. Angelina Jolie’s decision to get a double mastectomy due to having a gene that makes her highly susceptible to cancer may have fueled the rise in such procedures, or it may simply be symptomatic of a proactive approach many Americans are taking to one of the biggest killers of women.
Dr. Deborah Axelrod, who is a breast surgeon at the NYU Perlmutter Cancer Center in New York, said according to a CNN report that the numbers are “staggering” in terms of the rise of women opting to receive double mastectomies with a CPM in recent years. A total of 42% of women ages 20 to 44 who got surgery between 2010 and 2012 opted to get both breasts removed via CPM, which is nowhere near the level it was between 2004 and 2006, according to the report, in which Axelrod noted that the figures in her experience rose from 11 to 28 percent in that period.
Studies differ on just how big the rise is, but one published in the journal Annals of Surgery found that CPM more than tripled in the United States over a 10-year period between 2002 and 2012, even though there wasn’t that much evidence that this procedure has a lot of benefit.
“That 1 in 6 breast cancer patients chose bilateral mastectomy is really striking. We knew it was increasing, but I don’t think many of us realized just how frequent this is,” says study author Reshma Jagsi, M.D., D.Phil., professor and deputy chair of radiation oncology at the University of Michigan.
“At a time when emotions are running high, it’s not surprising that newly diagnosed breast cancer patients might find it difficult to absorb this complex information. It seems logical that more aggressive surgery should be better at fighting disease–but that’s not how breast cancer works. It’s a real communication challenge,” Jagsi says. “As physicians, we want to be respectful of our patients’ preferences and values. We don’t want to alienate patients who are already in a stressful situation. We want them to trust us.”
I am a Stage 2B breast cancer survivor. I found a lump in my right breast. I told my surgeon not to think twice and do a mastectomy if it was cancerous. One lymph node was found to have cancer and over three dozen were removed just to be safe. I should have asked the surgeon to remove both breasts if cancer was found in the one. Why? Because I now think every day about the possibility of someday developing cancer in my left breast. I did not choose to have a breast implant because I didn’t want any foreign object in my body, so now I live with a torso that is, to put it bluntly, distorted. Wearing a breast prosthesis always felt uncomfortable and I stopped using it. Because I only have one breast my tops and blouses no longer fit properly. I don’t care what physicians and research studies have to say about choosing to have a contralateral prophylactic mastectomy — they don’t dwell in my skin and those medical field chatterboxes that are male will never know what it’s like to (1) be female and (2) have only one breast. They should stop trying to be nannies and stop trying to know better than the women who face breast cancer and take charge of their own lives.