Public Health Moment

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in the United States, aside from skin cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, an estimated 192,370 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed among women in the United States this year. And about 40,170 women are expected to die from the disease in 2009 alone.

Surgical Treatments

For women diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, surgery is the typical treatment.

But that surgery can take one of two forms, says University of Minnesota professor Beth Virnig, who studies treatments for breast cancer.

She says it can be either mastectomy or breast-conserving surgery, otherwise known as lumpectomy.

Beginning the early 1990s, a major effort was made by oncologists to reduce the rate of mastectomy by favoring lumpectomy and radiation therapy. The thought was that lumpectomy was less invasive and had equivalent survival results.

Since then, mastectomy rates have dropped, Virnig says.

Rates for double mastectomy rise

But she and other researchers have noticed a recent increase in the number of double mastectomies.

Virnig encourages more research to learn why but also offers advice to women, in this installment of Public Health Moment.

Listen to Virnig on Public Health Moment