Question 1413 — health

Summary

Mr. Joël Giraud draws the attention of the Minister of Solidarity and Health to the right to information of women suffering from breast cancer on breast reconstruction. Currently, access to breast reconstruction is not equal throughout the national territory and many women give it up for different reasons, including the lack of information on all breast reconstruction techniques. In the vast majority, they do not know all the complex and varied options available, which does not allow them to give informed consent to the intervention proposed to them. Several establishments have made a real effort in this direction by distributing information documents on the subject but we are still very far from a result of 100% well-informed women. In the United States, a federal law was passed by Congress allowing access to information on all breast reconstruction techniques to be organized, the Breast Cancer Patient Education Act. In France, currently only one in three women undergo reconstruction for multiple reasons, including lack of information and the rest to be borne by them (Sources: INCA and 2014 Societal Cancer Observatory, “Rebuilding yourself after a mastectomy” from the League Against Cancer). 75% of Immediate reconstructions are done with prostheses while there are other alternatives which are not often offered to women reluctant to implants, particularly since the affair of fraudulent PIP prostheses and the current risks linked to textured prostheses. Some wait 10 years or more before discovering that alternatives exist that were never offered to them. In France (66 million inhabitants), it was carried out 500 reconstructions without prostheses by DIEP in 2015 while in Belgium (11 million inhabitants) 1,000 DIEP procedures are carried out each year. Although the HAS has recognized that breast reconstruction is an integral part of breast cancer, women's right to information on all breast reconstruction techniques is still in its infancy. Also, he asks her to kindly let him know her intentions in order to to include this right as an obligation so that women can decide in full knowledge of the facts whether or not to have breast reconstruction and thus allow women who wish to do so to access a better quality of life.

Machine translation from French. The official text remains authoritative.

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