Preventive Surgeries May Be Lifesaver for Women at High Cancer Risk

Study finds removing breast, ovaries greatly lower the odds, but decision can be a difficult one

By Madonna Behen
HealthDay Reporter

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TUESDAY, Aug. 31 (HealthDay News) -- Women who carry genetic mutations that boost their odds of breast and ovarian cancer can live longer and reduce their cancer risk by having preventive surgery, a new study suggests.

The surgery in question is drastic: removal of the breasts or ovaries before any signs of cancer have arisen.

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However, "what our findings show is that women who choose to have these surgeries will reduce their risk of dying of breast or ovarian cancer by about 70 to 80 percent, which is pretty profound," said study senior author Dr. Timothy Rebbeck, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

The findings are published in the Sept. 1 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The 22-center trial, one of the largest of its kind, studied nearly 2,500 women who were found to have inherited mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes.

Women who carry these mutations have a lifetime risk of breast cancer of anywhere between 56 percent to 84 percent, according to the researchers, whereas the risk for ovarian cancer ranges from 36 percent to 63 percent for BRCA1 mutation carriers and 10 percent to 27 percent for BRCA2 mutation carriers. By contrast, the lifetime risk of breast cancer among women generally is about 12 percent, and for ovarian cancer, it's less than 2 percent.

Roughly half of the women in the study had undergone either mastectomies (surgery to remove their breasts) or salpingo-oophorectomies (surgery to remove the ovaries and fallopian tubes) between 1974 and 2008, in order to proactively lower their risk of cancer. The women were followed for an average of about 3.5 years.

During the follow-up period, no breast cancer events occurred in the women who underwent mastectomies, while 7 percent of the women in the group who didn't undergo surgery were diagnosed with breast cancer.

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