Not Everything We Call Cancer Should Be Called Cancer
By Laura Esserman and Scott Eggener
Dr. Esserman is a surgeon and breast cancer oncologist at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Eggener is a surgeon and urologic oncologist at the University of Chicago.
“…..Let’s look at two examples. For prostate cancer, a biopsy showing a grade of Gleason 6 (also known as Grade Group 1) is considered low or very low risk. In breast cancer, diagnosis of ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS, is similarly low or very low risk, representing the very earliest, noninvasive stage of the disease.
These findings make up about 20 percent to 25 percent of all prostate and breast cancer diagnoses in the United States, involving about 100,000 people annually. These patients are routinely treated with surgery or radiation even though their conditions are not life threatening and cause no symptoms at the time they are spotted. To our knowledge, neither Gleason 6 nor DCIS spreads to other parts of the body unless more aggressive forms of cancer develop or are simultaneously present. They are more accurately explained as risk factors for prostate or breast cancers with malignant potential.”
Really? Thoughts?
Don