Mastectomy

Actress Angelina Jolie's decision to have a double mastectomy rather than risk developing breast cancer hit close to home for Melissa DeSantis, a Bel Air mother of three children. As DeSantis read about Jolie's experience, she began to feel a sense of kinship to the Hollywood star. DeSantis also made the tough decision to have her breasts removed in a February surgery. Like Jolie, she had one of the inherited gene mutations that leaves many women more likely to develop cancer.

When Sandy Rosenblatt looked in the mirror, the striking brunette could see nothing but one big flaw — her eyes, which were sunken and seemed a little dark. So at 34 she had a plastic surgeon smooth them over. While she was there, she decided to have her long oval face made a little cheekier and her brows a little less creased. Since then the Sterling, Va., resident has had to return to her doctor in Baltimore several times a year for new applications of commercial fillers and wrinkle removers, a drawback of such products.

Negotiators for the Senate and House of Delegates reached agreement yesterday on legislation sought by the governor to give significant new rights to members of HMOs and other managed-care insurance plans.The "patients' bill of rights" is designed to give consumers new flexibility in their health care, with easier access to specialists and a broader choice of medications.The key to the House-Senate agreement is a compromise giving insurers the choice of paying for a 48-hour hospital stay after mastectomies and testicle removal operations or providing patients with at least one home visit by a care provider within 24 hours.

Actress Angelina Jolie, who got a double mastectomy to lower her chances of breast cancer, will also have her ovaries removed, according to People magazine. Jolie said in a New York Times editorial Tuesday that she had her breasts removed and reconstructed because she has a gene mutation that makes her risk of breast cancer high. Women with the BRCA1 gene mutation also have a high chance of developing ovarian cancer. There is no test to detect ovarian cancer and women often die from the disease because it is diagnosed in the late stages.

Two studies to be published today confirm that women with breast cancer who have a lumpectomy followed by radiation have the same survival rate as women who have cancerous breasts removed.About 70 percent of women with early breast cancer were alive after 10 years, whether they had a mastectomy or breast-conserving lumpectomy with radiation, according to a review of 36 breast cancer trials that included more than 17,273 women. The review was to be published today in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The number of women having both breasts removed after a tumor is found in one increased 150 percent during a five-year period despite a lack of evidence that double mastectomies increase survival in most women, researchers reported yesterday. Guidelines for treatment of a localized breast cancer call for removal of the tumor and not for a mastectomy, let alone a double mastectomy. But an increasing number of women, particularly young, white women, are pushing for the more aggressive procedure for reasons that are not totally clear, the researchers said.

If there ever was a right time to be diagnosed with breast cancer , Beth Thompson found one. In February 2006, the pea-size tumor in her right breast was too small for a clinical trial of Herceptin, a targeted therapy that had proved effective in advanced stages of the aggressive cancer Thompson had. She underwent a lumpectomy and chemotherapy. When the cancer continued to show signs of growth, she had a double mastectomy. But soon after, her doctor, buoyed by promising trial results, encouraged her to consider Herceptin, developed by Genetech to target the protein that fuels the cancer's growth.

Sonia K. Lowitz, who after a radical mastectomy for cancer in 1964 founded the state chapter of the Reach to Recovery program to help women with similar surgery, died Thursday of cancer at her Pikesville home. She was 68.Mrs. Lowitz began the state's Reach to Recovery program -- a volunteer organization associated with the American Cancer Association -- in 1970 to help the women who have undergone the trauma of a mastectomy."She was dedicated and committed to the people that we serve," said Carole Sharp, a senior community specialist for patient services of the cancer association.

Developed in 1981 by Atlanta plastic surgeon Carl Hartrampf, the TRAM-flap procedure for breast reconstruction tunnels tissue and muscle from the patient's abdomen beneath the skin to the chest to construct a new breast mound. Subsequent outpatient surgery creates a nipple and areola, the pigmented area around the nipple.The benefits of the TRAM-flap procedure (the acronym stands for transverse rectus abdominus muscle) include gaining a breast that feels and moves naturally and adjusts itself to the body's weight loss or weight gain.

It's a sad truth that a market exists for Missy Hall's new Mount Airy business.But as long as there are women with breast cancer, there will be customers for The Tender Touch Mastectomy Boutique.In her shop at 5807 Woodville Road, Ms. Hall fits prostheses for women who have had mastectomies and lumpectomies. She also sells other items for cancer patients, including wigs, turbans and surgical bras."Basically I help them in any way I can," said Ms. Hall, 50. "A lot of them just want to come in and vent.