For years women diagnosed with breast cancer were left with no choice but to receive a mastectomy, but now, thanks to new treatment advancements women can choose from a number of options.

When Laura Cuty-Ruiz was diagnosed with breast cancer, she was glad that there were several treatment options available so she could decide with her family how to best treat her disease. "I chose extremely aggressive treatment strategies to make the best decision for me so I could be as healthy as I could for my long term survival."

Doctors like General Surgeon Joey Manibo tell us that thanks to new treatment plans patients can chose from a number of options to best fit their individual stage of cancer, unlike patients diagnosed in the past. "In the past, you had breast cancer you removed the whole breast, there was no question, you just remove the whole breast."

But new surgical advances, chemotherapies, and radiations available to treat breast cancer now offer patients a choice when it comes to deciding if removing the entire breast is really what's best for them. Dr. Manibo says, "a mastectomy is essentially removing the breast, the whole breast tissue and skin."

Dr. Manibo also says, "breast conservation therapy is essentially just removing the tumor with some surrounding, healthy breast tissue, and leaving the rest of the breast tissue in tact."