Can you have treatment in any hospital of your choice now?

My 87 year old mother has a cancerous solid breast lump her options are a mastectomy or lumpectomy with 6 weeks of radio therapy which treatment would be the safest choice considering her age?

• Answer:

  I've worked in a surgical ward where we did those surgeries and at that age I would recommend the lumpectomy. And the reason for that is that I've seen many old patients get very confused after the surgery. Some takes a very long time to get back to normal. It's because the operation takes a harder toll on them due to their age. Some of them were even discouraged to have the operation because most likely it wouldn't be the cancer killing them in the end but old age and sometimes it would take something like that to trigger a dementia. But that is of course individual. Sometimes it's down to quality of life and not necessarily to cure.