Psychosocial Outcomes and Contralateral Prophylactic Mastectomy (CPM)

With your verbal permission, you may have been asked to complete a questionnaire about your surgical treatment preferences for breast cancer as part of initial screening for this study. This takes about 5 minutes to complete.

If you agree to participate in this study, during the same visit you will complete a questionnaire about your background, such as your education level, marital status, and family history of cancer. This should take about 3 minutes to complete.

You will also be asked to complete a questionnaire about your surgery decisions and your feelings about those decisions at the following times: around the time you enroll in study before your surgery, and again about 1, 6, and 12 months after the surgery is completed. This questionnaire should take about 30-40 minutes to complete each time. You may complete this questionnaire at the clinic or you may complete it at home. If you chose to complete the questionnaire at home, you will be given a postage-paid envelope to mail it back to the study staff.

Length of Study:

After you complete all of the questionnaires, your participation in this study will be over.

This is an investigational study.

A total of up to 345 participants will be enrolled in this study. Up to 245 will take part at MD Anderson and up to 100 will take part at Kelsey-Seybold.

Group of women who decide to have contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM) along with scheduled mastectomy. Screening questionnaire completed at baseline. Surgery decision questionnaires completed at surgical consult visit, and at 1, 6, and 12 months after the surgery is completed.

Behavioral: Questionnaires

Group of women who decide not to have contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM) performed during scheduled mastectomy. Screening questionnaire completed at baseline. Surgery decision questionnaires completed at surgical consult visit, and at 1, 6, and 12 months after unilateral mastectomy or breast conserving surgery is completed.

Behavioral: Questionnaires

Screening questionnaire completed at baseline. Surgery decision questionnaires completed at surgical consult visit, and at 1, 6, 12, and 18 months after the surgery is completed.

Time frame: Baseline to 12 months post surgery, up to 18 months. Survey administered at 1, 6, 12 months following surgery.

Cancer-specific distress was measured with the Impact of Events Scale (IES) to assess 2 common categories of responses to stressful events: intrusion and avoidance. The IES scale consists of 15 items. For the intrusion category (7 items), participants are asked to rate the items on a 4 point scale: 0 (not at all), 1 (rarely), 3 (sometimes), and 5 (often) and the sum is the total score (complete range is 0 to 35). For the avoidance category (8 items), participants are asked to rate the items on a 4 point scale: 0 (not at all), 1 (rarely), 3 (sometimes), and 5 (often) and the sum is the total score (complete range 0 to 40). The total cancer-specific distress score is the sum of the total intrusion score and the total avoidance score (complete range is 0 to 75). The total distress score was averaged for surveys completed at each time point. Higher mean scores indicate greater cancer-specific distress.

Time frame: One to 12 months post surgery, up to 18 months. Survey administered at 1, 6, 12 months following surgery.

The Satisfaction with Decision Scale (SWD) scale measures women's satisfaction with their surgery decision using the SWD six-item survey with a five-point scale where 1 is "strongly disagree" and 5 is "strongly agree" and the sum is the total score (complete range 6 to 30). The total satisfaction with decision score was averaged for surveys completed at each time point. Higher mean scores indicate greater satisfaction with the treatment decision.

Treatment Decisions and Breast Cancer: Psychosocial Outcomes