EBCC-11: Survival Rates After Prophylactic Mastectomy in BRCA-Mutation Carriers
Posted: Thursday, March 29, 2018
A bilateral risk-reducing mastectomy (BRRM) increases breast cancer–specific survival in healthy women who carry the BRCA1 mutation when compared with women who opted for surveillance, according to Annette Heemskerk-Gerritsen, PhD, of the Erasmus University Medical Centre, in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and colleagues, in a presentation at the 11th European Breast Cancer Conference (EBCC-11) in Barcelona (Abstract 134). However, the study found no difference in survival benefit in women with BRCA2 mutation whether they chose BRRM or surveillance, despite the reduced breast cancer risk.
The study included data from 1,696 BRCA1 and 1,139 BRCA2 mutation carriers with no history of cancer, and 38% and 32% of those women, respectively, underwent BRRM. In women with a BRCA1 mutation, the hazard ratio for breast cancer–specific survival was 0.07. At age 65, breast cancer–specific survival was 93% for the surveillance group and 99.6% for the BRRM group. In the BRCA2 cohort, the breast cancer–specific survival at age 65 was 98% for the surveillance group and 100% for the BRRM group.
“We observed that BRCA2-associated breast cancers were diagnosed with more favorable characteristics than BRCA1-associated breast cancers,” stated Dr. Heemskerk-Gerritsen in a press release. “BRCA2-associated cancers were diagnosed at an older age and were more likely to have receptors for the hormones estrogen and progesterone and for HER2, suggesting BRCA2-mutation carriers face a better prognosis at diagnosis than BRCA1-mutation carriers.”
