This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Prevalence of contralateral prophylactic mastectomy increasing among patients with unilateral DCIS

Add topic to email alerts

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on .

Subscribe

Added to email alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

Back to Healio

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com.

Back to Healio

From 1998 to 2005, the rate of women with unilateral ductal carcinoma in situ undergoing contralateral prophylactic mastectomy increased by 148%, according to data from a population-based cohort study.

Patient age and race were among those factors associated with higher rates of contralateral prophylactic mastectomy, according to the researchers.

Using the SEER database, the researchers identified 51,030 women treated with surgery for unilateral DCIS from 1998 to 2005. Breast-conserving surgery and unilateral mastectomy had the highest number of patients at 69.9% and 26.1%; however, 4.1% of patients underwent CPM.

According to the researchers, the rate of CPM among women aged younger than 40 years was 12.6% for all surgically treated patients and 25.9% for those who underwent mastectomy. Other factors associated with a higher rate of CPM were: recent year of diagnosis, the presence of lobular carcinoma in situ and white race.

Increased CPM among surgically treated patients was associated with large tumor size and high grade; however, these factors were associated with lower CPM rates among patients who underwent mastectomy.

During the study period, the researchers reported an increase in the rate of breast-conserving surgery, from 66.9% in 1998 to 71.5% in 2005. However, the rate of unilateral mastectomy decreased from 30.9% in 1998 to 23.3% in 2005. The rate of CPM increased during the study period by 148% among all surgically treated patients and by 188% among those patients who underwent mastectomy.

“This finding is similar to their previous study for patients with stage I to III invasive cancer, for whom the rate of CPM increased from 1.8% in 1998 to 4.5% in 2003,” Abram Recht, MD, department of radiation oncology at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, wrote in an accompanying editorial.

“This development is even more striking in view of the modest but statistically significant increased rates of ipsilateral breast-conserving therapy both studies observed over the same time.”

Tuttle TM. J Clin Oncol. 2009;doi:10.1200/JCO.2008.20.1681.