Oct 07
31
More Woman Choosing Double Mastectomies
More and more women, and many of them considerably younger women for having breast cancer, are opting to get both of their breasts totally removed after they are diagnosed with breast cancer in hopes of totally eliminating any recurrence of the disease in their other, disease free breast.Â
Many times, physicians say they feel the second breast removal may not necessarily improve these women’s odds of survival, especially since it is cancer free, however if the patient wants it and would feel better doing it, or has a long history of breast cancer running in the female side of their family, then they will get what they want.Â
There was actually a study conducted recently by a doctor who noticed that nearly double his patients were opting for the double mastectomies in the last few years, and wanted to see first, why they were increasingly taking this rather radical option over a simple lumpectomy or just the removal of the one cancerous breast, and second, if it really had any bearing on whether the cancer was more or less likely to return.Â
While the results for the latter could hardly be conclusive with such a short time frame for the research study, he did conclude that more women were opting for the removal of both breasts because they felt that they were doing a sort of “catch all” treatment, and that they were just doing what they felt was probably inevitable – the removal of both of their breasts, up front instead of having to go through the pain and emotional trauma of removing the second breast later on down the line.Â
I can definitely see the reasons behind getting both breasts removed right up front, and can certainly understand what drives it – the fact that it’s a very scary thing and they would rather just literally cut it all out even if it’s not cancerous yet, and also because there are much better and much less painful and costly reconstructive procedures that can be done to rebuild breasts nowadays.Â
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