For at least a century now, the women who have had their doctors detect early breast cancer in them have gone under the knife for a painful kind of surgery that was always thought to be the best chance they could have at survival. The surgery was lymph node removal from the armpit and women have always agreed to having it done because their doctors always told them that it would help them live longer and keep the cancer from coming back. What doctors find today is that breast cancer surgery like this does no good in one out of five women who have it done in America. It doesn't help them live longer, it doesn't help them beat breast cancer any better and it doesn't keep the cancer from coming back. All that it does is to give these poor women a lot of pain from the surgery and a possible shot at an infection called lymphedema that can be quite bothersome.
Why was breast cancer surgery deemed to be of no use in these women? It was because these were women who were given chemotherapy and radiation therapy anyway ahead of the surgery; and these methods of cure usually work well enough that in one of five women, the cancer is destroyed effectively. In case you didn't know, all women with breast cancer in the lymph nodes are given radiation and chemotherapy. It's because doctors believe that cancer that's gone as far as the lymph nodes doesn't usually yield to mere surgery. They believe that once cancer has gone this far, it is likely to be ready to spread even farther.
Breast cancer specialists are so impressed with these new findings that they are already changing their treatment plans at several major hospitals. To be given the benefit of this new funding, you have to make sure that you visit one of the more advanced frontline hospitals. Most places still have doctors who are stuck to the old way of doing things - which would be recommending breast cancer surgery for the lymph nodes, left and right, indiscriminately.
It's just that doctors and patients both find it difficult to scale the intensity of their treatment back. They feel that anything that's less intense an option has to be risky. But they should take a little inspiration from the way the intensity of treatment aimed at breast cancer has been on the decline for decades now, with great results. It used to be that up till about the 70s, doctors kept lopping breasts off with radical mastectomy a great deal. That's when they discovered that they doesn't have to lope breasts off; that lumpectomy and radiation often achieved results that were just as good.
As scientific understanding progresses about what breast cancer is all about, doctors learn to become less panicked and more restrained in what they recommend. It's the way medical
Why was breast cancer surgery deemed to be of no use in these women? It was because these were women who were given chemotherapy and radiation therapy anyway ahead of the surgery; and these methods of cure usually work well enough that in one of five women, the cancer is destroyed effectively. In case you didn't know, all women with breast cancer in the lymph nodes are given radiation and chemotherapy. It's because doctors believe that cancer that's gone as far as the lymph nodes doesn't usually yield to mere surgery. They believe that once cancer has gone this far, it is likely to be ready to spread even farther.
Breast cancer specialists are so impressed with these new findings that they are already changing their treatment plans at several major hospitals. To be given the benefit of this new funding, you have to make sure that you visit one of the more advanced frontline hospitals. Most places still have doctors who are stuck to the old way of doing things - which would be recommending breast cancer surgery for the lymph nodes, left and right, indiscriminately.
It's just that doctors and patients both find it difficult to scale the intensity of their treatment back. They feel that anything that's less intense an option has to be risky. But they should take a little inspiration from the way the intensity of treatment aimed at breast cancer has been on the decline for decades now, with great results. It used to be that up till about the 70s, doctors kept lopping breasts off with radical mastectomy a great deal. That's when they discovered that they doesn't have to lope breasts off; that lumpectomy and radiation often achieved results that were just as good.
As scientific understanding progresses about what breast cancer is all about, doctors learn to become less panicked and more restrained in what they recommend. It's the way medical
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