Saturday, September 22, 2012

Incidence of Breast Cancer after a double Mastectomy

I thought I'd look to see if there are studies showing the recurrance rate of cancer after a mastectomy.  This is after someone has already had cancer.  I wonder if my chance of getting it is even lower than that... Here are some insights I found around the web.

Susan G Komen for the cure site:

Mastectomy and local recurrence

With mastectomy, the best predictor of local recurrence is how far the cancer has spread in the lymph nodes. The chance of local recurrence in five years is about six percent for women with negative lymph nodes (do not contain cancer) [89].
For those who have cancer in one to three nodes, the chance of local recurrence in five years is about 16 percent. Radiation therapy can reduce this risk to about two percent [89].
The chance of local recurrence increases to about 26 percent when cancer is in four or more lymph nodes [89]. Radiation therapy to the chest wall after mastectomy is given routinely when there are four or more positive nodes. This reduces the risk of local recurrence in five years to about six percent for those with positive lymph nodes [89].

Dr. SUsan Love Research Foundation:

Local Recurrence After Mastectomy Approximately 20–30 percent of women with local recurrences after mastectomy have already been diagnosed with metastatic disease and another 20–30 percent will develop it within a few months of diagnosis. Therefore, just as with local recurrences after breast conservation, tests should be done to look for distant disease. These tests may include a bone scan, chest X-ray, CT scan, MRI, or PET scan. They may also incorporate some blood tests, among which are tests for tumor markers. Local recurrence after mastectomy usually shows up as one or more nodules on or under the skin in or near the scar. With implants, the recurrences are in front of the implant. With a flap, the recurrences are not in the flap itself (tissue from the abdomen) but along the edge of the old breast skin.

Most commonly the lesion will be removed surgically and followed by radiation to the chest wall if the woman has not previously had radiation. Occasionally, even larger lesions will be surgically removed, including sections of rib and breastbone. Although this approach has not been shown to increase survival, it can improve the quality of life by preventing further local spread, which can be difficult to manage.

Despite aggressive local treatment, up to 80–85 percent of women with an isolated local recurrence following mastectomy will eventually develop distant metastases. For this reason, systemic therapy is sometimes used in this group as well. There are, however, no randomized controlled studies showing an advantage to restarting systemic therapy at this time rather than waiting and using it if and when metastatic disease appears. The biggest predictor of overall survival is the length of time between the original therapy and the recurrence or the length of the disease-free interval. The later the recurrence, the better


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