Double mastectomies for Breast Cancer tripled

The number of women who have a double mastectomy for breast cancer has tripled in 10 years, according to new research, even though this aggressive surgery has not been associated with a survival benefit.

Most women who are diagnosed with breast cancer undergo surgery as part of their treatment. There are three types: breast-conserving surgery, such as lumpectomy or partial mastectomy; unilateral mastectomy, which removes the entire breast affected by cancer; and double or bilateral mastectomy, which removes both the affected and unaffected breast. The researchers found that the number of women who had bilateral mastectomy increased from 3.9% in 2002 to 12.7% in 2012, whereas the rate of unilateral mastectomy dropped from 35.8% to 28.9%. The rate of breast-conserving surgery held steady during that period of time at about 59%. In the current study, researchers looked at the outcomes of more than 200,000 women in the database who had surgery prior to 2007. They estimated that the 10-year survival rates were similar for the three types of surgery: 91.8% for breast-conserving surgery, 83.8% for unilateral mastectomy and 90.3% for bilateral mastectomy.