BRCA Mutation: New Model Quantifies How Surgeries Reduce Cancer | UCLA Anderson School of Management

BRCA Mutation: New Model Quantifies How Surgeries Reduce Cancer | UCLA Anderson School of Management

Elisa Long, informed by personal experience, parses data to help those mulling mastectomy and gynecological surgeries

Elisa Long was 33 years old and new to the UCLA Anderson faculty when her research and her life grimly intersected. Specializing in medical decision making under uncertainty, she routinely studied how to weigh difficult decisions, often in the absence of complete information. Newly diagnosed with breast cancer — she would soon learn that she is also a BRCA1 mutation carrier — Long was confronted with a critical dilemma of her own: How long could she delay prophylactic surgery to remove healthy organs and still avoid further cancer and risk to her life?