WDBJ7 Roanoke News and Weather NRV Lynchburg Danville | Are mastectomies overused for treatment of early stage breast cancer?
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A new study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association takes a look at concerns about the overuse of mastectomies in the treatment of early stage breast cancer.
Denise Moscatiello was diagnosed with breast cancer in February. She immediately assumed she would need major surgical treatment.
"When I got the phone call with the news, which came from the radiologist originally, that's the first thing that pops into your head is oh my god, I'm going to need a mastectomy," said Moscatiello.
Turns out surgeons recommended she have breast-conserving surgery or lumpectomy instead.
"For a long time surgeons have been blamed for mastectomy rates," said Dr. Monica Morrow with the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
It's the reason Morrow wanted to see if mastectomies are too often performed unnecessarily, when a less invasive breast-conserving surgery would suffice.
Most women would prefer to keep their breast, if that option was open to them. But over time it's turned out that mastectomy has persisted in the United States as a treatment which raised concerns about whether or not surgeons were even offering a choice in treatment," said Morrow.
After surveying nearly 2-thousand women with early stage breast cancer, Morrow found most patients received the procedure their surgeon recommended, and more 75-percent of them choose breast-conserving surgery instead of a mastectomy.
"I think our research clearly shows that the behavior of the majority of surgeons is quite medically appropriate," said Morrow.
Researchers are also found that if you start out with breast-conserving surgery, the likelihood you'll end up eventually needing a mastectomy is only about 12 percent, so the success rate is quite high.
