Women’s experience of unilateral mastectomy without reconstruction

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  How do women experience having one breast following simple mastectomy without reconstruction? A phenomenological study.

• IRAS ID

  191907

• Contact name

  Katherine Williams

• Contact email

  katherine.alton@sssft.nhs.uk OR a026521e@student.staffs.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  University of Staffordshire

• Duration of Study in the UK

  1 years, 7 months, 29 days

• Research summary

  This study aims to explore women’s experience of unilateral mastectomy (cancer in one breast breast) without reconstruction. Mastectomy has been found to have an impact on self-esteem confidence and body image. Reconstruction surgery has been proposed to reduce this impact. Consequently, NICE (2002) recommend breast reconstruction to all women whom are eligible following mastectomy. Despite this, a recent UK audit found 31% of 16,485 women chose to undergo reconstructive surgery, suggesting that it may not be the preferred course of treatment following mastectomy. Furthermore, some researchers have found no significant differences in psychosocial outcomes between women who have undergone mastectomy with women who had mastectomy with reconstruction. Conversely, it has also been found that risk-reducing surgery in the opposite breast (called contralateral risk-reducing mastectomy) is increasing in the UK. Women who have unilateral breast cancer are 3-5 times more likely to develop cancer in the opposite breast. However, the decision to have the contralateral breast removed following unilateral breast removal is not always associated with risk-reduction (Murphy, Milner & O’Donoghue, 2013). There is little research that explores women’s experience of having one breast and how the imbalance of this is managed. Up to 8 women will be recruited by their lead breast nurse at the surgical outpatient department at Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust. They will be invited for a 90 minute interview with the chief investigator (CI). Interpretative phenomenological analysis will be used to analyse transcript data, providing a rich insight into women’s experience of unilateral mastectomy. This may shed light into why women may not opt to have reconstructive surgery whilst also revealing why women may choose to have contralateral risk-reducing mastectomy in absence of a high-risk contralateral breast cancer.
  The research will last between 12-18 months including the time at which participants are recruited to writing up the research.

• REC name

  West Midlands - Black Country Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  16/WM/0141

• Date of REC Opinion

  24 May 2016

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion