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How Does Breast Cancer Affect Families?

How Does Breast Cancer Affect Families? (1:16)

A breast cancer diagnosis can affect families. But Elisa Port, MD, a surgeon at The Mount Sinai Medical Center, says that even if family members have experience with breast cancer, it's important to remember that no two cancers alike.

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[MUSIC] Breast Cancer does not only affect the patient but obviously the network of people around her or him in rare cases, it's very common that women have family members who have also been affected. Breast Cancer is a very common disease and so in general they have at least someone in their lives whose been affected.

I think it's important for a patient really diagnosed to remember that no matter how similar they seem, no two cases are alike and so what a friend or a family member had or has may have no bearing whatsoever on the kind of treatment or surgery someone chooses to do, and that the best advice I say I can give is to get with the doctor as we talked about, with an experience in Breast Cancer that you trust and you've to make individualized decisions for your own case not based on what friends or family members have had.

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