Each year more than 60,000 women in the United States are diagnosed with a type of early breast cancer called Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS), which represents 25 percent of all breast cancer cases. Almost all DCIS patients are treated with surgery to remove the lump, the entire breast or even both breasts. Two recent studies from different institutions show that women diagnosed with low-grade DCIS who have surgery do not live longer than those who did not have surgery.
In the first study, doctors examined data on more than 50,000 cases of DCIS and found that:
• the 10-year survival rate was 98.8 percent for those who had surgery near the time of diagnosis and 98.6 percent for those who did not have surgery. That means that surgery did not prolong the lives of women suffering from this type of early breast cancer.
• Women who had more extensive surgery did not live longer than those who had the far less-invasive lumpectomy.
• For the mildest cases of DCIS, a lumpectomy (surgically removing just the precancerous lump) did not increase survival compared with patients who had no surgery.
