Does removing both breasts when cancer is found in one help? Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Bilateral mastectomy as a means of preventing cancer in the other breast when it is found in one breast may not be of benefit when it comes to reccurence or survival, a new study shows. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, says this complex study left out a number of critical factors to consider.

Nelson: Other things they provided no information on: who got endocrine therapy. The reason that's important is we know for sure that taking tamoxifen reduces the chance of contralateral breast cancer when it's used in an adjuvant setting treating the original breast cancer. No data on risk for breast cancer whether they had BRCA mutations. No data on utilization of screening kind of approaches to breast cancer. :23

All three of these factors and others are germane when it comes to analyzing who goes on to develop another breast cancer after the first one, and they also help determine who might benefit from removal of both breasts. Nelson concludes that more study is clearly needed to help inform women about best practices. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.