Management of women at high familial risk of breast and ovarian cancer

Abstract

Women with a strong family history of breast and/or ovarian cancer have a greatly increased risk for the development of these diseases. The key question for these women is what they can do to ameliorate their cancer risk. Fortunately, there are now several interventions which clearly reduce breast and ovarian cancer risk in high-risk women. These include risk-reducing bilateral mastectomy, salpingo-oophorectomy and chemoprevention with tamoxifen or raloxifene. For those women who do not undergo risk-reducing bilateral mastectomy, screening is generally recommended in order to try and detect breast cancers at an early stage. Breast magnetic resonance imaging has an emerging role in such scree..