United States: Many Women with early stage of breast cancer in one breast sometimes and choose to have both breasts removed because they fear the cancer might spread.
However, a new study of over 600,000 patients tracked for 20 years shows this choice may not improve survival rates.
Study Findings on Survival Rates
Canadian researchers originally found that while removing the healthy breast reduces the chance of cancer developing there, it does not change the chances of surviving breast cancer.

“Self-safety of contralateral cancer through pre-emptive surgery did not appear to reduce the risk of death in the 20-year period,” concluded a team led by Dr. Steven Narod of Women’s College Hospital in Toronto. He is also a very much know professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Toronto.
As the researchers might have noticed that bilateral mastectomy has been increasing among the women with the cancers detected in just one breast for the years and despite consensus discouraging the procedure in women of average risk they added.
Could a woman’s decision to have her second unaffected breast removed be the warranted in terms of survival.
Increase in Bilateral Mastectomy
As reported by HealthDay, to find out the Narod’s team looked at the US cancer confined to the one breast between 2000 and 2019 and this cancer ranged from the breast cancer’s very earliest stage which is called ductal carcinoma in the situ up to stage 3 invasive cancers.
Comparison of Treatment Outcomes
Outcomes were followed for three groups of about 36,000 women each, separated by treatment type. One group got the least radical type of breast cancer surgery, called a lumpectomy; the second group opted to have only the affected breast removed (unilateral surgery); and the third group decided on double mastectomy.
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