Apr 7th, 2021 - More women with breast implants are asking for them to be removed without replacement, authors of a new guidance say, but the field has lacked formal guidelines on how to present the surgical options methodically and scientifically to patients. Neil Tanna, MD, MBA, associate program director of plastic surgery at Northwell Health in Great Neck, New York, together with thought leaders in the fie...

Mar 30th, 2021 - (Reuters Health) - Women with obesity who undergo bariatric surgery may have a lower risk of breast cancer and get diagnosed at earlier stages when they do develop these malignancies, a recent meta-analysis and systematic review suggests. Researchers examined data from 11 studies with a total of 1,106,939 women with obesity, including 105,295 women (9.5%) who underwent bariatric surgery. At bas...

Mar 25th, 2021 - A controversial, big-budget breast cancer screening trial that has been chronically unable to attract enough women participants since its debut in 2017 got a vote of confidence from a special working group of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) on March 17. The Tomosynthesis Mammography Imaging Screening Trial (TMIST) should continue, but with modification, the expert group concluded in its rep...

Mar 22nd, 2021 - Andrew M. Kaunitz, MD Andrew M. Kaunitz, MD: Several weeks ago, I saw a new patient, a woman in her early 50s who reported "swelling in my armpit." In the past week, she had noted that tissue in the upper outer quadrant of her left breast and axilla seemed puffy, a bit tender, and more prominent than on her right side. She had no recent fever. She had no personal or family history of breast can...

Mar 17th, 2021 - Most breast cancer screening centers in the United States are not following national guidelines, say researchers reporting a new analysis. They assessed 606 centers and report that, among the centers that recommended a starting age for screening mammography, nearly 90% advised women to begin screening at age 40 years and to continue annually. This contrasts with the current recommendations from...

Mar 17th, 2021 - (Reuters Health) - Women with invasive breast cancer may reduce their all-cause mortality risk when they follow any of four healthy eating patterns, a recent study suggests. Researchers examined data on 3,660 women with invasive breast cancer who had diet assessments an average of 2.3 months after diagnosis to pinpoint how closely they followed one of four eating patterns: the American Cancer S...

Mar 16th, 2021 - NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - For women with strongly HR-positive and ERBB2-negative invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC), neoadjuvant chemotherapy is preferable to neoadjuvant endocrine therapy, a new study suggests. "Although neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) is conventionally used to downstage locally advanced and unresectable primary breast cancers, numerous studies have identified neoadjuvant endoc...

Mar 10th, 2021 - NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In women with pathogenic variants in BRCA1 and BRCA2, risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy (RRSO) to help avoid ovarian cancer also appears to reduce breast-cancer risk, particularly within five years of surgery, according to a new analysis. Women with these variants are at high risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer, Dr. Laurent Briollais of Sinai Health...

Mar 7th, 2021 - (Reuters Health) - Women have better screening outcomes with digital breast tomosynthesis, but a new study suggests that Black women have less access to this imaging modality. Researchers examined data on 385,503 women screened at one of 63 U.S. breast imaging facilities between 2015 and 2019. Overall, these women underwent a total of 542,945 screenings that combined digital breast tomosynthesi...

Mar 7th, 2021 - Adding everolimus to adjuvant hormone therapy for early ER+, HER2- breast cancer does not offer any benefit over hormone therapy alone, according to results of the phase 3 UNIRAD study. At a median follow-up of almost 3 years, rates of disease-free survival, distant metastasis-free survival, and overall survival were similar in the everolimus and hormone therapy-alone arms. These findings were ...

Mar 7th, 2021 - A large, retrospective study shows how germline genetic testing has evolved over time in women with breast or ovarian cancer and reveals a path forward for testing these patients. Investigators found racial and ethnic disparities in genetic testing as well as "persistent underuse" of testing in patients with ovarian cancer. The investigators also tabulated instances in which genetic testing ide...

Mar 3rd, 2021 - In the United States, breast cancer mortality rates dropped every year for women across all age groups between 1989 and 2010, but after that, the trend stalled for those younger than 40 years. "It's clear that mortality rates in women under 40 are no longer decreasing," lead author R. Edward Hendrick, PhD, clinical professor from the Department of Radiology at the University of Colorado School ...

Mar 2nd, 2021 - A world-renowned oncologist developed an "emotional" relationship with a terminally ill cancer patient, known as Patient E, after prescribing treatment that was unlikely to improve her life expectancy, a medical tribunal heard. Professor Justin Stebbing, who's treated wealthy cancer patients from around the globe, shared "flirty" messages with the woman, who developed feelings for him due to th...

Mar 1st, 2021 - Girls with more body fat experienced earlier menarche and hormone changes, but later full breast development, compared with those with normal weight, according to longitudinal data from 90 girls aged 8-15 years. A link between obesity and early puberty has been observed among U. S Shaw said she was surprised by several of the study findings. "Others have reported increased male-like hormones (a...

Feb 24th, 2021 - Editor's note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape's Coronavirus Resource Center. Axillary adenopathy, or swelling under the armpit, has been reported by women after receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines, but it is also a common symptom for breast cancer. "It may also be more noticeable because of the large number of people getting vaccinated within a sh...

Feb 15th, 2021 - Of four surgical procedures for breast cancer that have been determined to be of low value because they yield no meaningful clinical benefit, two continue to be utilized; in fact, the use of two of these procedures has increased in the United States, new research shows. "This is the first study to [evaluate] all four of the low-value breast cancer procedures at the same time and try to draw som...

Feb 14th, 2021 - Endocrine therapy is standard of care for estrogen-receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer, but only about half of women respond. At present, there is no method for identifying the women who are likely — and also unlikely — to respond. But a new approach looks to be useful: it involves a trial of estrogen and then imaging that measures the function of estrogen receptors in the cancer cells. This ...

Feb 8th, 2021 - The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) is planning to update its breast cancer screening guidelines, which were last issued in 2016. For transparency, it has released the draft research plan it will use for formulating the update, and this draft plan is open for comment until February 17. However, an expert in breast screening has taken issue with the whole plan. Daniel Kopans, MD, prof...

Feb 7th, 2021 - A new approach to breast screening proposes that all women should have a baseline  evaluation of breast density by mammography at the age of 40. The result would then be used to stratify further screening, with annual screening starting at age 40 for average-risk women who have dense breasts, and screening every 2 years starting at age 50 for women without dense breasts. Such an approach would ...

Feb 3rd, 2021 - GENEVA (Reuters) - Breast cancer has overtaken lung cancer as the most common form of the disease, accounting for nearly 12% of new cases each year worldwide, the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday. "For the first time, breast cancer now constitutes the most commonly occurring cancer globally," Andre Ilbawi, a cancer specialist at the WHO, told a U.N. briefing ahead of World Cancer Day o...