They recently did a study that found that breast cancer survival rates are the same for women who do self-exams and women who don't.
I found it really weird that they were focusing solely on survival rates. What about quality of life issues? Lumpectomy vs. masectomy? Need for chemotherapy? Duration of treatment and recovery period? Ability to resume one's normal lifestyle vs. not ever being able to get back to the exact same quality of life?
I don't know much about cancer treatment, so I can't even begin to guess at the answers. But if, for example, doing a self-exam means catching a lump early enough that you can get a lump early enough that you can get a lumpectomy and don't need chemo rather than a masectomy with chemo, I'd say it's still worthwhile, even if there is a higher risk of false alarms. All survival is not created equal.
1 comment:
You're absolutely right.
What disturbs me is that they're not saying women shouldn't examine our own breasts. They're still highly recommending we do that. They're just no longer urging it be done a certain way at a certain time.
I think this message is being lost on a lot of women. I heard several co-workers say, Did you see that the Cancer Society is saying not to do breast self-exams?
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