Double mastectomy does not increase the percentage of survival after breast cancer, according to the results of a scientific study published by the medical journal JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association).
Researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine conducted a scientific study on a cohort of 189,734 women with a breast cancer between 1998 and 2011. Of these patients, 55% had the tumor removed followed by radiotherapy, 38.8% a simple mastectomy and 6.2% a double mastectomy.
Scientists compared the survival rate of patients and the type of operation chosen.
At 10 years, the mortality rate is 16.8% with breast-conserving surgery and radiotherapy, 20.1% with unilateral mastectomy, and 18.8% with bilateral mastectomy.
“We can now say that a patient suffering from breast cancer and undergoing double mastectomy will have no better chance of survival than someone who had the tumor removed and treated with radiation therapy, ”concludes Dr. Allison Kurian, professor of medicine at Stanford University (California) and co-author of these jobs.
“Bilateral mastectomy may be recommended for women at high risk of breast cancer due to a family history or a risk mutation (BRCA1 and BRCA2). This procedure increased by 14.3% in 2011 ”, explain the authors of the study. Indeed, “women with breast cancer with a mutation in the BRCA1 gene or the BRCA2 gene and whose tumor was detected at an early stage, should opt for a double ablation breasts in order to double their chances of survival ”, according to researchers at the Boston Cancer Institute (United States).
According to the Institute for Public Health Surveillance (INVS), breast cancer remains the main cause of cancer mortality in women. It is responsible for nearly 11,000 annual deaths in France and 410,000 worldwide.
