Women with early-stage breast cancer face one of the toughest decisions in life: to have surgery to remove the breast (mastectomy), or have surgery to remove just the cancer from the breast (breast-conserving surgery), followed by radiation treatments. These are both valid and worthwhile choices, but what is not discussed often enough is that there’s no difference in survival rates between women who had a mastectomy versus those who had a breast-conserving operation.
Breast-conserving surgery can be somewhat more expensive, since it requires multiple surgeries and chemotherapy, but maybe worth it for some women based on personal preference.