Time to prophylactic surgery in BRCA1/2 carriers depends on psychological and other characteristics

To investigate the medical and psychosocial factors determining the time to prophylactic surgery of unaffected women carriers of a deleterious BRCA1/2 mutation.

Prospective study on a French national cohort of unaffected BRCA1/2 carriers (N = 244); multivariate Cox proportional hazard modeling.

Median follow-up time was 2.33 years (range, 0.04-6.84 years). Time to surgery was shorter when the psychological impact of BRCA1/2 result disclosure was stated to be higher (P ≤ 0.01). Those who intended to opt for prophylactic surgery before being tested did so faster and more frequently after test disclosure than those who were undecided/opposed. The older the women were, the faster their uptake of risk-reducing salpingo-oophorectomy (adjusted hazard ratio >2.95; P < 0.001) was; the uptake of those with at least two children was also faster (adjusted hazard ratio = 2.51; [1.38-4.55]). Those who opted most quickly for risk-reducing mastectomy more frequently had a younger child at the time of testing (adjusted hazard ratio = 4.63 [1.56-13.74]). Time to surgery was shorter when there was a first-degree relative with ovarian/breast cancer (P ≤ 0.01).

Time to prophylactic surgery depends on the stated psychological impact of disclosure and on women's cognitive anticipation of surgery after adjusting on sociodemographic characteristics.