Bilateral prophylactic mastectomy
Kelly Rothe decided to get a bilateral prophylactic mastectomy, i.e. preventative removal of both breasts. She’s a big Red Wings fan (who isn’t) and in particular, a big fan of goaltender Jimmy Howard. Because the Red Wings organization is so classy, the video below shows what they did for this young lady.
The rest of this post focuses on the science. You may recall that kerfuffle when Angelina Jolie decided to get a bilateral prophylactic mastectomy. So here is some info and links to hopefully inform you a bit more.
I’m not sure where Kelly get the 85% risk from. However, the risk is certainly higher for some women with specific genetic profiles.
In two studies, the estimated risks of developing breast cancer by age 70 years were 55 to 65 percent for women who carry a deleterious mutation in the BRCA1 gene and 45 to 47 percent for women who carry a deleterious mutation in the BRCA2 gene (6,7). Estimates of the lifetime risk of breast cancer for women with Cowden syndrome, which is caused by certain mutations in the PTEN gene, range from 25 to 50 percent (8,9) or higher (10), and for women with Li-Fraumeni syndrome, which is caused by certain mutations in the TP53 gene, from 49 to 60 percent (11). (By contrast, the lifetime risk of breast cancer for the average American woman is about 12 percent.)
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Therapy/risk-reducing-surgery
Why do BRCA1 mutations cause primarily breast and ovarian cancers?
http://goo.gl/jTpcXA via Ian Bosdet
Breast Cancer Signs & Symptoms
http://goo.gl/ScqWsk via Letha McGarity
Bras and Breast Cancer
http://goo.gl/FNqrnS via Buddhini Samarasinghe
Salty MRI
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+ChadHaney/posts/VJ2k6h2taRQ
At a seminar about BRCA1 and BRCA2, Dr. Olopade shared a story about finding women in South America that had unknown Jewish ancestors from Spain. The South American women were carriers of BRCA mutations and did not know that their Jewish ancestors fled from Spain to South America.
Haplotype structure in Ashkenazi Jewish BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21597964
Ashkenazi Jews
http://www.jewfaq.org/ashkseph.htm
#ScienceSunday
May 11, 2014
Great post, Chad Haney !
May 11, 2014
Thanks Ian Bosdet. We can only hope that by spreading knowledge, we can attenuate the senseless backlash towards preventative mastectomies.
May 11, 2014
Classy, indeed!
May 11, 2014
I’m not familiar with the band that they got to play for Kelly. It’s still classy. Private dinner, private band, and private tour of Joe Louis arena and the locker room, topped off by meeting Jimmy Howard, yes it was classy.