Predicting women's intentions for contralateral prophylactic mastectomy: An application of an extended theory of planned behaviour

Abstract

Purpose: Most women with unilateral breast cancer (BC) without BRCA1/2 gene mutations are at low risk of contralateral breast cancer (CBC). One CBC risk-management option is contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM). While there is no evidence that CPM increases life-expectancy, its uptake is increasing. This study aimed to assess the validity of an extended social-cognition model, the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), in predicting women's intentions to undergo CPM. Method: Four hundred women previously treated for BC completed an online survey exploring demographic and disease factors, attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, anticipated regret, uncertainty avoidance, s..