my personal edition > breast cancer > news


  E-Mail this DGDispatch to a colleague

DGDispatch

Contralateral Prophylactic Mastectomy Reduces Risk for Second Primary Cancer in Women with Stage 1 or 2 Primary Breast Cancer and Positive Family History: Presented at AACR

By Peggy Peck

Special to DG News

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- April 15, 2002 -- Contralateral prophylactic mastectomy appears to significantly decrease the risk of second primary breast cancer in women with a family history of breast cancer who undergo contralateral risk reduction mastectomy following therapeutic mastectomy for stage 1 or stage 2 primary breast cancer.

The results from a retrospective study were reported here Wednesday at the 93^rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR).

Dr. Thomas Sellers and colleagues from the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota, conducted a multi-sample cohort study of 535 women identified through the Mayo Clinic surgical index. All patients had therapeutic mastectomy for treatment of primary breast cancer, all had a positive family history for breast cancer; they also had contralateral risk reduction mastectomy. The women were treated between 1971 and 1993.

The researchers compared outcomes for these women with a second cohort of 538 women who underwent therapeutic mastectomy for unilateral disease but who did not elect contralateral risk reduction mastectomy. Sixty-five percent of these women also had a positive family history for breast cancer.

Age at time of treatment was similar in both cohorts -- mean age 48 in women who underwent contralateral risk reduction mastectomy and 49 in the cohort that had only therapeutic mastectomy.

The women were followed for an average of 9.3 years. In the risk reduction cohort, three second primary breast cancers were identified; in the group treated only with therapeutic mastectomy, 28 second primary breast cancers were identified.

After adjusting for stage and number of positive nodes, contralateral risk reduction mastectomy was associated with a 90 percent reduction in risk of second primary breast cancer. Adjusting for age at diagnosis and timing of the risk reduction mastectomy did not decrease the apparent benefit.

Dr. Sellers and colleagues concluded that contralateral risk reduction mastectomy is an effective treatment strategy for women with primary breast cancer who have a positive family history of breast cancer.

E-Mail this DGDispatch to a colleague

To print, use this version