Early mastectomies can curb cancers

The increasingly common practice of removing both breasts while they are healthy is an effective, if radical, way of preventing breast cancer in women at high risk for the disease, researchers say.

The findings published in the New England Journal of Medicine were first reported by The Associated Press in 1997 when they were released at a medical conference in San Diego.

The researchers said they consider prophylactic mastectomy, as it is called, to be to be at least 90 percent effective in reducing breast cancer. It's not totally effective because the disease may already have spread before the breasts are removed.