Nearly 22,000 Americans will be diagnosed with stomach cancer this year, and half will die.For the Bradfield cousins, the risk was even higher, 11 of them inherited a mutated cancer gene.
With up to an 80% chance of developing stomach cancer, they decided to have their stomachs removed.
Dr. Jeffrey Norton of the Stanford Medical Center said, “It would be a big gamble for them to wait because if they develop stomach cancer that was macroscopic or large, they would have probably had lymph node metastases and would have died.”
Dr. Norton says each of the stomachs he removed showed early signs of cancer, signs that went undetected.
Many of the Bradfield’s never knew each other before their surgeries.
Recently, they met up in Las Vegas to talk about their experience.
