Breast cancer choice: lumpectomy or mastectomy

By Alexandra Steblinina. Only a third of women diagnosed with breast cancer receive all the information about the treatment, the new study showed.

Photo: Breast cancer choice: lumpectomy or mastectomy

Women have two opportunities – cutting out the tumor and prolonged therapies with radiation or major surgery and remove the breast. Both procedures - lumpectomy and mastectomy - have the same high five-year survival rates.

But the survey showed that who got the full information about the mastectomy and the breast reconstruction were four times more likely to choose mastectomy over lumpectomy.

Traditionally, in the case of breast cancer, the whole breast was removed. Currently the decision to do the mastectomy is based on various factors including breast size, number of lesions, biologic aggressiveness of a breast cancer, the availability of adjuvant radiation, and the willingness of the patient to accept higher rates of tumor recurrences after lumpectomy and radiation.

Outcome studies comparing mastectomy to lumpectomy with radiation have suggested that routine radical mastectomy surgeries will not always prevent later distant secondary tumors arising from micro-metastases prior to discovery, diagnosis, and operation.