Seventy‐eight breast cancer outpatients were interviewed and their medical records were reviewed to document illness‐related and treatment‐related factors associated with psychosocial adjustment. Poor prognosis and more radical surgery both independently predicted poor psychological adjustment. The effect of type of surgery appeared to be mediated by the patient's sense of disfigurement and by changes in the sexual and affectional patterns in the marriage, rather than by prognosis or disability. Degree of dysfunction and whether or not the patient had radiation therapy or chemotherapy had no independent effects on psychological adjustment. Results point to the problematic psychosocial outcomes associated with mastectomy and, more generally, to the illness‐ and treatment‐related factors that may place a breast cancer patient at risk for psychosocial adjustment problems.

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From 2002 to 2008, reports from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) claimed that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) significantly increased the risks of breast cancer development, cardiac events, Alzheimer disease, and stroke. These claims alarmed the public and health professionals alike, causing an almost immediate and sharp decline in the numbers of women receiving HRT. However, the actual data in the published WHI articles reveal that the findings reported in press releases and interviews of the principal investigators were often distorted, oversimplified, or wrong. This review highlights the history of research on HRT, including a timeline of studies that have or have not found a link between HRT and breast cancer; discusses how to distinguish important, robust findings from those that are trivial; closely examines the WHI findings on HRT and breast cancer, most of which are weak or statistically insignificant; reviews the current thinking about possible links of HRT with cardiovascular disease and cognitive functioning; and reports research on the benefits of HRT, notably relief of menopausal symptoms, that affect a woman's quality of life. On these complicated matters, physicians and the public must be cautious about accepting "findings by press release" in determining whether to prescribe or take HRT.

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