Surgery to remove healthy ovaries gives a triple benefit to high-risk women: It lowers their threat of breast and ovarian cancer, and it boosts their chances of living longer, research suggests. The study is the largest to date to find advantages for preventive surgery for women who carry BRCA gene mutations.
Women with the faulty genes have a dramatically higher cancer risk than other women - five times greater for breast cancer and at least 10 times greater for ovarian cancer.
The study, appearing in today's Journal of the American Medical Association, found benefits for women with two different BRCA gene variants whether they previously had had breast cancer or not.
The results offer more tailored evidence for women considering ovary removal, a surgery that ends fertility, fast-forwards them into menopause, and may contribute to osteoporosis or heart problems later in life.
"It's really critical to have the best information when making such a profound decision," said senior author Timothy Rebbeck of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
The researchers followed nearly 2,500 women with BRCA mutations in Austria, England, the Netherlands and the United States.
All the women were cancer-free at the start. They were watched for an average of four years. Most of the women were younger than 50 at the start of the study.
