Can’t get no satisfaction.

A common theme coming out of the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium is that a lot of women are living longer than ever without disease recurrences. Beyond the obvious victories, this means the morbidities of our treatments are becoming increasingly important. Counseling on surgical decision-making outside the setting of BRCA mutations likely includes something like “outcomes are the same with either approach.” While that is true oncologically-speaking, it is clearly not true in every regard. This survey of 581 women 40 years and younger at time of breast cancer diagnosis assessed quality of life at a median of nearly 6 years following various surgeries. As seen in a similar study, breast satisfaction and psychosocial and sexual well-being were significantly improved with breast conservation versus unilateral and bilateral mastectomies. TBL: Patients with breast cancer merit treatment counseling that touches on more than disease outcomes. | Dominici, SABCS 2018