Surgeon’s Advice May Affect the Choice of Breast Cancer Patients

Some breast cancer patients may have encountered several problems due to the insecurities they revealed after asking for the surgeon’s recommendation. For example, there are a lot of women who decide to have surgery which implies a double mastectomy even if they may not need this, being diagnosed with breast cancer in one breast. The number of women requiring for a double mastectomy has considerably increased during the last decade.

Some women were also influenced by Angelina Jolie’s decision in 2013 when she argued she will undergo the procedure even if her doctors did not diagnose her with breast cancer. Ms. Jolie has indeed obtained positive results when being tested. Her tests have revealed that she was genetically exposed to breast cancer.

A new study was published on December 21 in the American Medical Association Surgery magazine. It has shown that many women are strongly influenced by their surgeon. Approximately 1,569 women from Georgia and Los Angeles participated in the survey being diagnosed with cancer in one breast.  Only 1.9% of them have decided to undergo a double mastectomy even if their surgeon did not recommend it.

Nevertheless, the study has unveiled a more dramatic fact. About one out of five women had undergone a double mastectomy even if they did not receive such advice from their doctor. Reshma Jagsi, the lead author of the study conducted at the University of Michigan, has claimed that approximately ten years ago scientists began to notice this increase in the number of breast cancer patients who asked for such a procedure.

Scientists wanted to know why women requested for such a procedure even if there might not have got any medical benefits. The new findings have amazed a lot of researchers in the field, especially Dr. Jagsi, who is also a professor of radiation oncology at the University of Michigan and he treats many breast cancer patients.

They have analyzed the response of women who did not have a recommendation from their surgeon. The study proved that 14% of those women decided to go through this complicated procedure anyway. The women who were questioned about their decision argued that they have taken their surgeon’s recommendation very seriously.

What is more, the study has also unveiled that those women who opted for a double mastectomy were younger, better educated and healthier than those who did not undergo such a procedure. When they were asked why they requested the surgery, these women said that they wanted to have their “peace of mind.”

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