Young women with BRCA mutation can safely postpone radical surgery

Young women with breast cancer and a BRCA mutation do not need to rush to have a double mastectomy, after a large prospective study found that breast conservation with radiotherapy was a safe option in the first decade after diagnosis. Experts said that young women with a BRCA mutation should take time to discuss whether radical breast surgery was the right choice for them.

The study, published in the Lancet Oncology, found that survival after treatment of women with a BRCA mutation was similar to overall survival in women without the mutation—at least for the first 10 years.1

The POSH study included 2733 women recruited between 2000 and 2008 from 127 hospitals in the UK. The women were all aged 40 years or younger when they were first given a diagnosis of invasive breast cancer. Genotyping detected a BRCA mutation in 12% of the women: 201 patients with the BRCA1 …