EFFECTS OF INDIVIDUALIZED BREAST-CANCER RISK COUNSELING - A RANDOMIZED TRIAL

Background: Studies have shown that a majority of women with a family history of breast cancer have exaggerated perceptions of their own ris k of this disease and experience excessive anxiety, In response to the need to communicate more accurate risk information to these women, sp ecialized programs for breast cancer risk counseling have been initiat ed in medical centers across the United States. Purpose: Our purpose w as 1) to evaluate the impact of a standardized protocol for individual ized breast cancer risk counseling on comprehension of personal risk a mong first-degree relatives of index breast cancer patients and 2) to identify women most and least likely to benefit from such counseling. Methods: This study is a prospective randomized trial comparing indivi dualized breast cancer risk counseling to general health counseling (c ontrol). We studied 200 women aged 35 years and older who had a family history of breast cancer in a first-degree relative. Women with a per sonal history of cancer were excluded. Risk comprehension was assessed as the concordance between perceived ''subjective'' lifetime breast c ancer risk and estimated ''objective'' lifetime risk. Results: The res ults of logistic regression analysis showed that women who received ri sk counseling were significantly more likely to improve their risk com prehension, compared with women in the control condition (odds ratio [ OR] = 3.5; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.3-9.5; P = .01). However, in both groups, about two thirds of women continued to overestimate th eir lifetime risks substantially following counseling. Examination of subjects by treatment interaction effects indicated that risk counseli ng did not produce improved comprehension among the large proportion o f women who had high levels of anxious preoccupation with breast cance r at base line (P = .02). In addition, white women were less likely to benefit than African-American women (OR = 0.34; 95% CI = 0.11-0.99; P = .05). Conclusion: Efforts to counsel women about their breast cance r risks are not likely to be effective unless their breast cancer anxi eties are also addressed. Implications: Attention to the psychological aspects of breast cancer risk will be critical in the development of risk-counseling programs that incorporate testing for the recently clo ned breast cancer susceptibility gene, BRCA1 (and BRCA2 when that gene has also been cloned).