Younger women with locally advanced breast cancer with no known genetic factor and affecting only one breast do not appear to gain any ostensible benefit from having both breasts removed, despite a 150 percent increase in this procedure, known as contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM), in recent years.
Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine looked at the overall impact of women who choose to undergo CPM, most of whom are convinced that it will reduce their overall risk of dying from breast cancer.
What they found was that the risk of death from her primary breast cancer is much greater than her risk of death from any possible breast cancer developing in her other breast. What researchers termed a woman's "modest increase in life expectancy" from undergoing CPM may be balanced by a reduced quality of life.
Their findings were presented at the 2011 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in early December.
Source: Penn Medicine
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