For breast cancer patients who have a gene mutation that raises their disease risk, getting surgery — as Angelina Jolie did — to remove their ovaries may help save their lives, new research has found.
The surgery does not just help prevent ovarian cancer, but also boosts breast cancer survival rates, according to the study by the Women’s College Research Institute in Toronto.
Researchers looked at the cases of more than 600 women with the BRCA 1 gene mutation who had been diagnosed with stage 1 or 2 breast cancer. They found that those who had their ovaries removed at some point following diagnosis were 62% more likely to be living in 20 years than those who did not.
Getting the surgery within two years of a breast cancer diagnosis boosted survival odds by 73%, the researchers found.
“We recommend that the operation be performed in the first year of treatment to maximize the benefit,” Women’s College Research Institute Prof. Kelly Metcalfe and her co-authors said in the journal JAMA Oncology.
This recommendation makes sense but is not a reality for many women, said Dr. Stephanie Bernik, chief of surgical oncology at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan.
“Ideally, the sooner you do it the better, but many of these women are young and they want to have children,” Bernik said. “You have to balance the risks and benefits.”
Most breast cancer surgeons are already talking to patients who have a BRCA mutation about how getting their ovaries removed can lower future cancer risk, Bernik said.
