A risk-reducing mastectomy is when a person chooses to remove one or both healthy breasts in order to reduce their risk of developing breast cancer over the course of their life. While this may seem simple on the surface, the circumstances surrounding risk-reducing mastectomies are often anything but. Read on to learn a bit more about the term and its context.
Risk-reducing mastectomy is the most proactive decision a high-risk patient can make.
Your lifetime risk of developing breast cancer is determined by a host of things, from family and personal history to behavior and genetics. That risk, as determined by your doctor, informs your options when it comes to risk-reduction. More and more patients who are at elevated risk of developing breast cancer—sometimes called previvors—are choosing to take control of their health in sweeping and definitive ways. Risk-reducing mastectomies come as close to breast cancer prevention as is currently medically possible.
No step or procedure can guarantee that an individual will not develop breast cancer.
Risk-reducing mastectomy is sometimes called a preventive mastectomy or a prophylactic mastectomy. We believe that risk-reducing is the most accurate way to describe it, as nothing can truly, definitively prevent breast cancer.
Risk-reducing mastectomies offer patients peace of mind and control.
Patients who opt to undergo risk-reducing mastectomies typically do so to reduce screening, biopsies, and the anxiety that comes with those experiences. Their proactive choice to undergo this procedure also offers them more control than they may have if they were to develop breast cancer. By electing to have surgery of their own accord, they have the opportunity to choose their doctors and breast reconstruction procedures carefully and plan their lives accordingly. They also have the option to space our staged procedures in a way that is not necessarily available to patients in active treatment.
High risk patients can and should take their time in deciding what interventions are right for them.
It is important for high-risk patients to know that they need not make any firm decisions when it comes to surgery. Risk-reducing mastectomies are a great option for some patients. For others, surveillance is a better option. Others still find themselves in between. Your life, mental, and physical health are all critical decision-making components. What’s more is that those things change over time. The most important thing you can do is stay current on your options and use that information to make the best decision for you, wherever you are in your life at this moment.
