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.
By speaking up, advocates at the meeting have shifted the direction of breast cancer research. Some are alive, improbably, as a consequence of new treatments enabled and promoted by their advocacy.
These results have the potential to reduce overtreatment of breast cancer—stopping patients’ unnecessary exposure to chemotherapy—in a large fraction of cases.
For patients with metastatic breast cancer, doctors don’t yet know how to predict long-term responses to this PARP drug.
The paradigm for using chemo first to treat advanced breast cancer may change, as we gain experience with these new drugs.
Her disclosure reflects on the positive impact of awareness, the unfortunate frequency of breast cancer, and benefits of having medical insurance.
I hope for the future that other brilliant minds will have found and implemented ways to prevent most breast cancers, established accurate methods to detect it early, and developed better treatments, aimed at cures.
Now, there’s ample data to assuage most concerns. Among 1207 women with breast cancer before age 50, those who later delivered babies experienced no more likelihood of recurrence than did those who didn’t bear more children.
Metastatic breast cancer patients represent a significant group within the U.S. population who live with a chronic or terminal condition and stand to benefit from new treatments.
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?
Can you perform a sentinel lymph node biopsy, and avoid removing all of the glands from my armpit?
Since 1983, the Komen organization has raised and distributed more money for breast cancer care, education and scientific investigations than any entity besides the U.S. government…
The overdiagnosis campaign reflects a lack of respect for women’s capacity to act rationally upon receiving an abnormal test result.
Ribociclib is one of several CDK inhibitors being tried in breast cancer and other malignancies.
Risk factors for male breast cancer include genetic variants, obesity and high estrogen levels. As with women, inheriting a BRCA mutation can play a role.
Avoiding recurrence is a legitimate goal, but there’s a trade-off.
The public has every right to current information on what’s known about survival after a diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer, and for all forms of cancer.
The potential to reduce overtreatment, in women with a low chance of recurrence for which chemo is unlikely to be of benefit, is huge.
Online communities can be terrific. But in person, patients hug one another, and develop trust, bonds that last, hopefully, from one year’s meeting to the next.
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 benefits of Prolia appear to exceed those reported for a competing class of drugs, bisphosphonates. It’s well-tolerated and comparatively easy to take…
Die-in for metastatic breast cancer, Washington DC, October 13, 2015 (photo courtesy of Zachary Parker)
The number of people living with stage 4, metastatic breast cancer is unknown.
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…
A new study sheds light on social and economic factors that influence whether women with breast cancer get lumpectomy or mastectomy.
The increasing invasive, ER+ breast cancers in women who are otherwise healthy can’t be ignored.
In a prospective randomized trial, adding a “shave” to the lumpectomy site reduced positive margins and halved re-operations.
Ignoring non-invasive conditions like DCIS and LCIS, or telling women they’d be better off not knowing about early stage tumors, is not a smart option.
