Showing posts with label breast cancer guidelines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label breast cancer guidelines. Show all posts
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
CMAJ: Letter in response to Canadian Breast Cancer Guidelines/link to guidelinesBreast cancer guidelines
- Letters
Breast cancer guidelines
Ian Grant-Whyte, MA MD, Retired physician
There is often no rhyme or reason as to who gets breast cancer. Mammograms have detected many malignancies in women in their 40s who have many years of life ahead of them: wives, mothers, daughters, coworkers and friends.
Given that mammography is a cornerstone in our ability to save women’s lives from breast cancer, which is a leading cause of death among women between the ages of 40 and 49, the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care’s guidelines that appear in the Nov. 22, 2011, issue of CMAJ1 are absolutely unconscionable.
The guidelines1 could result in fewer women getting screened and a return to the days when we caught cancers only when they were big enough to feel. Without mammography, many women would not be candidates for treatment. You cannot treat a tumour until you find it.
Have you any idea how breast cancers can metastasize in two or three years? Have you ever visited a loved one in a hospice? This is not the time to turn back the clock. Finding a tumour late often leads to a poor prognosis.
Mammography has a proven track record, and we as doctors “must do no harm.” By jettisoning this life-saving tool, we are indeed harming the patient.
Reference
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Repeat Breast Cancer Surgery Guidelines Found Unclear - NYTimes.com
".....Nearly half the repeat operations were done in women whose pathology reports did not indicate that any stray cancer cells had been left behind, meaning that the operations probably did not help the patients. More disturbingly, 14 percent of patients who did have evidence of cancer left behind did not have another operation, for unknown reasons...."
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)
