Studies Highlight Differences in Breast Cancer Surgery for Young Women

The American Association for Cancer Research awarded Ann Partridge, MD, MPH, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, its 2018 Outstanding Investigator Award at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium for her significant contributions to breast cancer research, especially for young women. Dr. Partridge, who is a member of LBBC’s medical advisory board, spoke from the podium about differences in breast cancer among young women, recent research efforts, and work that still needs to be done. As Dr. Partridge noted, women who are young at diagnosis are more likely than older women to die of breast cancer and have lower quality of life.

Her talk shone a spotlight on issues of interest to young women, which included three studies given at the symposium. Two examined breast surgery choices, with the first looking at how women chose surgery after getting treatments that made it possible to remove the tumor and not the whole breast. The second studied the effects of those surgeries on women’s quality of life in the future. And a third looked at finding the risk of breast cancer based on age to guide testing and medical decisions.