writer, health care advocate, physician
As a society, we can’t treat our way out of breast cancer.
It would be far too expensive. Although surgery, radiation, and
medical therapies for breast cancer have improved, the physical toxicity—and expense—of treating advanced-stage cancers would be too great.
None of 42 experienced radiologists recalled having seen a single case of breast cancer vanish or regress without treatment.
Is there such a thing as statistical gas-lighting?
The overdiagnosis campaign reflects a lack of respect for women’s capacity to act rationally upon receiving an abnormal test result.
The series invites women and doctors to step out of their pro- or con- trenches, take a look at the modern screening landscape, scrutinize everything and re-assess all options.
The ACS now advises most women to wait until they reach age 45 for their first breast cancer screen. This is a huge mistake.
Whether or not mammography is effective at detecting breast cancer early, these findings demonstrate the current benefit of early detection.
DCIS accounts for approximately 1 in 5 breast cancer-ish diagnoses in the United States. The practical problem with DCIS is that most oncologists, surgical and medical, will admit they’re not sure what to do about it.
If overtreatment is the problem, the solution is not by avoidance of breast cancer detection, but by better education of physicians and patients.
The statistical assault on breast cancer screening continues. JAMA Internal Medicine has published another analysis…
There is no good trial of mammography using current radiology systems in the context of modern pathology and minimalist treatment approaches. And there is none underway. As seen in Forbes.
The panel’s C recommendation lessens the likelihood that women under 50 years will be encouraged to get mammograms and opens up the possibility that insurance will not cover their screening.
The authors’ definition of false positives and assumptions of overdiagnosis undermine calculations of mammography’s costs.
Automated whole breast ultrasound screening has the potential to improve breast cancer screening of women with dense breasts.
Researchers today are analyzing our grandmothers’ mammograms to inform women’s health and screening decisions today.
Radiologists who publish academic papers on breast imaging may be influenced by idiosyncrasies in training, what machines their practices own or hospitals happen to have purchased, anecdotal experiences and personal skills.
Women have every right to know if they have dense breasts and if they’re at increased risk for a hidden tumor.
To issue sound guidelines on breast cancer screening, would the USPSTF benefit by including an oncologist or radiologist on the panel?
Too often, people undergo surgery for small, unlikely-to-be-harmful thyroid tumors. But thyroid cancer is not breast cancer.
A key question about tomosynthesis is whether it’s worth investing in so many new machines and educating radiologists to interpret 3-D breast images.
This new JAMA article reviews the literature. At a glance, it may add to the growing perception among journalists, primary care physicians and others – including ordinary women – that mammography’s effectiveness has been, again, disproved.
Few forms of invasive breast cancer warrant no treatment unless the patient is so old that she is likely to die first of another condition, or the patient prefers to die of the disease….“Mammograms Spot Cancers That May Not Be Dangerous,” said….
The new findings have no bearing on whether or not cancer screening is cost-effective or life-saving. What the study does suggest is that med school math requirements should be upped and rigorous, counter to the trend
Expertise can make a huge difference in clinical outcomes.
It’s precisely because there are effective treatments for early-stage disease that it’s worth finding breast cancer early.
But consider – if the expert panel’s numbers are off just a bit, by as little as one or two more lives saved per 1904 women screened, the insurers could make a profit! By my calculation, if one additional woman at a cost of, say, $1 million, is…
Smack in the midst of October-is-breast-cancer-awareness-month, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a provocative article with a low-key title: “ Rethinking Screening for Breast Cancer and Prostate Cancer.”
