More Women Having Preventative Mastectomies, Says ACS

Dr. Melissa Macias currently serves as a physician at Aurora Health Care in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In here role there, she specializes in neurosurgery and is able to treat conditions of the central and peripheral nervous system. Outside of her daily surgical work, Melissa Macias, MD supports the American Cancer Society and its efforts toward ending breast cancer.

According to recent research by the American Cancer Society, more women are choosing preventive mastectomy as part of their early-stage breast cancer treatment. Study authors also observed that this trend is happening in younger patient populations, even though there hasn’t been any demonstrated long-term survival benefit to the procedure.

In a preventative mastectomy, a woman has portions of her breast removed that are not affected by breast cancer during treatment of cancer in other areas of the breast. In studying the choices of 1.2 million breast cancer-affected women, researchers discovered a 23 percent increase in the procedure among women under 45 years of age in the United States from 2004 to 2012. In older patients, the number of preventive mastectomies increased by nearly seven percent.