GynoFiles

For many years we have said that if a woman has one estrogen dependent cancer, she will likely be at risk for others. Cancer treatments also put one at risk for future cancers. So increased vigilance in getting all screenings are important for those with risk as well as those who have had disease. Women with BRCA1 mutations are at risk for developing breast and ovarian cancer, and now a link is suggested for some rarer types of uterine cancer in these patients. Given that all of these cancers may be estrogen dependent in some way, it is biologically plausible that there is an underlying link with the BRCA1 mutation. The reason this is extra important is that women who are  could be at increased risk of developing rare types of aggressive uterine cancer, in addition to their already well-known increased risk for breast and ovarian cancer, a new study shows. Because the link with ovarian cancer, some women have selected to have risk reducing surgery with just taking out the tube...

Your lifetime risk of getting breast cancer, if you are an American woman, is 12% or about 1/8 women. The risk may be even greater if you have known family history or the If you want to know your individual lifetime risk of breast cancer you could calculate it with the Gail Model of risk . Currently the recommendation is that if your score on the Gail Model is a one year risk of 1.7% or greater you should discuss breast cancer prevention with your gyno. All the best new resolutions are to do what is positive for health, and lots of posts contain risk factors for breast cancer , but few talk about how to reduce those risk factors, such as the medical treatments including tamoxifen which can lower life time breast cancer risk. Some things are not modifiable, early first period is probably associated with overall estrogen exposure and may in fact incur increased breast cancer risk in your life. Having children early decreases your risk of breast cancer, but if you wait until after you a...

There are many strategies to reduce breast cancer risk, and for women who are high risk there is a way to  use medication to lower your breast cancer risk . The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has changed the tenor of its recommendations in its clinical practice guideline on the use of chemoprevention for breast cancer, and they now are including the medications of raloxifene, and exemestane in the medications not just tamoxifen, and the organization is wanting more people to seriously consider these medication. Their point is that they are not seeing more people use these very effective therapies, and so awareness is not increasing, and more women and their gynos need to take note. Here is what you need to know Breast cancers,  that is due to cancers that have estrogen receptors, rate can be reduced by half by medicine use Every woman should know whether they are at increased risk by getting Gail Model Score or National Cancer Institute's...

Predicting breast cancer risk is important, as it helps us select who we are going to direct more aggressive prevention strategies. Neils Bohr once said prediction is difficult especially of the future. The problem with risk prediction of any disease acquisition is that only hind sight is 20/20 and although your risk may be low, if you get the disease, your acquisition is 100%. So physicians feel it’s important to try prediction, as that improves care, but patients (rightfully) often want more. If we predict that you are more at risk for breast cancer, there is something positive you can do to prevent the disease. Tamoxifen is one medication that can help to prevent breast cancer, who should take it and when to take it is the question for you and your gyno. Traditionally gynos have relied on the Gail scale to calculate risk . For some women there is a very short sojourn between atypia and cancer, so if you wait until you have precancerous changes (like detected on a Halo or a b...

Tamoxifen has moved from a treatment of breast cancer, to a prevention strategy for high risk women. Given that only 1-5 breast cancers are thought to be genetic, it's not actually a practical strategy of prevention for most women who will get breast cancer. None the less, it can reduce estrogen receptor positive breast cancer by about 50% if used for at least 5 years. The biggest puzzle is what to do for the complications women are at risk for them. For instance we know that there is almost a 4 times greater risk of lining cancer of the uterus (endometrial cancer) in women who are both over 50 and using the medication for breast cancer prevention. We have figured out that if a woman already has a polyp in the endometrium or the lining before the medicine is given for cancer prevention the likelihood of complication is greater. Although not yet studied, it's intriguing to think that women with prior endometrial ablations might have a significantly reduced risk of lining compl...