What's the best DCIS treatment choice for me?

Making treatment decisions for DCIS can feel overwhelming, especially when there are multiple good options to consider. Many people in this community have navigated similar choices and found it helpful to discuss factors like lifestyle preferences, recovery time, and long-term peace of mind with their care team. Connecting with others who've been through DCIS treatment decisions often provides valuable insights that can complement the medical guidance from healthcare providers.

Talk to your team about a recurrence or new invasive cancer and surveillance after a mastectomy. I finally decided on lumpectomy. I felt safer keeping my breast so that i could get regular mammograms.

Age, genetics, lifestyle, stable healthcare insurance coverage are all things I guess I’d weigh. I’m navigating a bit of the same. I’m 58 (age), and have breast cancer in my family history, but I dont have the BRAC gene, but I do have dense breasts which I think are more prone. I’ve just had a lumpectomy. It was grade 1 /16mm and not in my lymph nodes, so I feel I caught it early and the outcomes are so good now with radiation and chemo and monitoring. I might, however, do a breast reduction before radiation (pending FISH retesting results because biopsy came back equivocal). Technically they say a reduction doesn’t change the risk, but isn’t less dense breast tissue better? But a friend was diagnosed at 32, and had just finished having her 2nd kid, and was planning on traveling the world with them on a sailboat someday (now they’re going 9 years later). And she didn’t want to worry about needing a mammogram every 6 months while being abroad. So she was happy to do a mastectomy.

Hi Anita I was diagnosed with DCIS, in left breast. I chose double mastectomy for both breast. I did not want to put my body though radiation or chemo. I also was afraid of recurrence later on in life. I don’t regret my decision at all. My doctors have been great explaining all option treatments available for me, they listen to my input as well. I do the Natera genetics test every 3 months . My mother passed from breast cancer, her case was more severe . This helped me with my decision making.

I had DCIS stage also. First was told lumpectomy and radiation but after biopsy it was a bigger area and we did Masectomy. Then I didn’t have to have radiation. They took my breast down to muscle so chance of cancer almost 0.