Author Interviews, Breast Cancer, JAMA / 25.05.2014
Why Are More Breast Cancer Patients Choosing Contralateral Prophylactic Mastectomy?

- First, we found that nearly 20% of women in our population based sample of breast cancer patients reported strongly considering having contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM, which means they had their unaffected breast removed at the same time as the breast with cancer), and about 8% received it. Of those who did receive contralateral prophylactic mastectomy, most (about 70%) did not have a clinical indication for it, which included a positive genetic mutation of BRCA1 or BRCA2 or a strong family history of breast or ovarian cancer.
- However, most women (90%) who received it reported having a strong amount of worry about the cancer coming back (also called worry about recurrence).
- We also found that when women had an MRI as part of their diagnostic work-up for breast cancer, they more often received contralateral prophylactic mastectomy than when they did not have an MRI.