Breast Cancer Medications for High Risk Women: Are You a Candidate?

When it comes to your breast health, there are several points you may notice we try to drive home:

• know your risk (talk with your doctor about your Gail risk score)

• perform/get exams at regular intervals (mammograms, self-exams and CBE)

• reduce your risk (with modifiable risk factors).

These steps will have you on your way to your best possible breast health, hopefully working towards early detection and even prevention of breast cancer. In short, you could be saving your own life. Pretty powerful stuff.

For women who are at high risk – especially those over the age of 35 with family histories of breast and ovarian cancer – there are additional options to consider. Some women with the BRCA gene mutation may opt for prophylactic mastectomies. Decisions like these are not made lightly.

An alternative for high risk women is prevention through drug therapies. When making major decisions about your health it is imperative that you have serious and thorough conversations with your healthcare providers. Prescription medications are not for everyone, and can come with side effects. However, in the cost-benefit analysis, drugs such as tamoxifen or raloxifene for women in the highest risk categories will have benefits far outweighing the risks.

To learn more about tamoxifen and raloxifene and what it means to decrease your risk of breast cancer (and the potential not-insignificant side effects), we found this article to be an excellent, brief breakdown. If you are in a high risk category, it’s always worthy to learn more about what you can do to be on the road to your best possible health!

Image credit: Pills here by Robson# via Flickr Copyright: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Originally published 9/30/13 on mammographykc.com.