Of four surgical procedures for breast cancer that have been determined to be of low value because they yield no meaningful clinical benefit, two continue to be utilized; in fact, the use of two of these procedures has increased in the United States, new research shows.
“This is the first study to [evaluate] all four of the low-value breast cancer procedures at the same time and try to draw some conclusions on practice patterns across facilities,” said senior author Lesly A. Dossett, MD, MPH, Center for Health Outcomes and Policy, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
The two low-value procedures that have increased in use are contralateral prophylactic mastectomy for average-risk women with unilateral cancer and sentinel lymph node biopsy for clinically node-negative women aged 70 years and older with hormone receptor–positive (HR+) cancer.
“This suggests that formal efforts to reduce low-value care through dissemination of guidelines, education of patients or providers, or alignment of incentives will be necessary to achieve full deimplementation,” she told Medscape Medical News.