Mixed Progress in Efforts to Reduce Low Value Breast Cancer Surgery

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Tue, June 16, 2020

The data is clear: for patients with early stage breast cancer, certain operations risk more harm than good — increasing the risk of medical complications, missed work and health care costs without increasing survival rates.

But efforts in recent years to reduce four procedures deemed low value for early stage breast cancer patients have met with only mixed success, according to a Michigan Medicine analysis of nearly 60 studies.

As part of the national Choosing Wisely campaign, the American College of Surgeons, the Society for Surgical Oncology, and the American Society for Breast Surgeons identified four low value procedures used in cases of early stage breast cancer that risk harm without improving overall survival.

The U-M study by Lesly Dossett (senior author) and team, which appears in JAMA Surgery, found that reduction efforts have only been successful in two out of the four procedures.

 

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