Taking control of cancer: Why women are choosing mastectomy.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
108 Background: Rates of both unilateral (UM) and contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM) for early stage breast cancer (ESBC) have been increasing since 2003. More extensive surgery is not a benign procedure without the risk of complications. Studies suggest that the increase is due to women choosing UM and CPM; we do not know what factors are influencing the choice for more extensive surgery. Methods: We conducted a qualitative study using grounded theory to identify factors for the choice of mastectomy. Purposive sampling was used to identify women across the Toronto Area (Ontario, Canada), who were suitable candidates for breast conserving surgery (BCS) but underwent UM or CPM. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Constant comparative analysis identified key concepts and themes. Results: Data saturation was achieved after 29 in-person interviews. 12 interviewees were treated at academic cancer centers, 6 at an academic non-cancer center and 11 at community centers. 15 women underwent UM; 14 underwent UM+CPM. Median age was 55. ‘Taking control of cancer’ was the dominant theme. Fear of breast cancerwas expressed at diagnosisand remains throughout decision making. Fear translates into the overestimated risk of local recurrenceand contralateral cancer. Despite discussion of the equivalence of BCS and UM, patients chose UM due to fear of recurrence and misperceived survival advantage. Similarly, patients chose CPM to eliminate the risk of contralateral cancer and misperceived survival advantage. Women were actively trying to Control Outcomes, as more surgery was seen as greater control. Conclusions: Women seeking UM and CPM for treatment of their early stage breast cancer manage their fear of cancer by undergoing more extensive surgery which in turn drives mastectomy rates. It is important to understand this process so that we may improve our ability to discuss issues of importance to women and facilitate informed decision-making.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".