PARIS - WOMEN take note: Not all breast
cancers kill. One in three women diagnosed with breast cancer in public
screening programmes are being treated needlessly, a new study has found. The
reason is that their tumour will not be life-threatening, the British Medical
Journal (BMJ) reported on Friday.
The study by Scandinavian experts highlighted the dilemma facing doctors when it
comes to detecting and treating breast cancer - the 'silent killer' of women,
thus named for the way it can stealthily claim lives.
But not all breast cancers are life-threatening. In some cases, the cancer will
grow so slowly that the patient will die of other causes before it produces
symptoms, or it may remain dormant over the years or even shrink.
Because doctors have no idea whether the cancer will be lethal or harmless, they
tend to treat all patients diagnosed with a tumour. But cancer treatment, using
powerful drugs, radiotherapy or surgery, causes harm.
So it is vital to know how many patients may be getting unnecessary treatment,
especially given the huge investment in having women undergo regular mammograms.
Dr Karsten Jorgensen and Dr Peter Gotzsche of the Nordic Cochrane
Centre in Copenhagen pored over data from screening programmes done in
Australia, Britain, Canada, Norway and Sweden. They looked at trends seven years
before the programmes were implemented, and seven years after.
Once screening programmes began, more cases of breast cancer were inevitably
picked up, the study showed. If a screening programme is working, there should
also be a drop in the number of advanced cancer cases detected in older women,
since their cancers should theoretically have been caught earlier when they were
screened.
However, the two experts found the national breast cancer screening systems,
which usually test women aged between 50 and 69, simply reported thousands more
cases than previously identified.
Overall, Dr Jorgensen and Dr Gotzsche found that one-third of the women
identified as having breast cancer did not actually need to be treated.
Dr Jorgensen said that for years, women were urged to undergo breast cancer
screening without them being informed of the risks involved, such as having to
endure unnecessary treatment if a cancer was identified, even if it might never
threaten their health. 'This information needs to get to women so they can make
an informed choice,' he said. 'There is a significant harm in making women
cancer patients without good reason.'
Source : The Straits Times
