(12-06-10) Study reveals huge overdiagnosis of cancer causing unnecessary treatment and

Imagine being told your imaging tests are back and there's bad news. You have
cancer. To save your life, your doctor says, you must submit to surgery, chemo,
radiation and a host of additional tests and prescription drugs. Of course,
there's no guarantee the malignancy will be totally stopped or that the cancer
treatment won't cause both immediate and long-term health consequences.

Now imagine the same scenario -- only it turns out the tests were
misinterpreted and you really didn't have any sort of life-threatening cancer
in the first place. This goof-up must be extremely rare, right? After all, in
the high tech world of modern day mainstream medicine, dangerous malignant
tumors are accurately spotted, correct?

Wrong.

In fact, research just published in the Journal of the National Cancer
Institute suggests the overdiagnosis of cancer is nothing less than a large and
growing problem in the US. Study authors H. Gilbert Welch, M.D., and William
Black, M.D., of the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White
River Junction, Vermont, and the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, conclude
it's time for this phenomenon to be faced head-on with the development of
clinical and research strategies to quantify, recognize, and deal with cancer
overdiagnosis.

So just how big a problem are we talking about? Dr. Welch and Dr. Black used
data from large randomized screening trials to estimate the extent of
overdiagnosis and their findings are nothing less that shocking. They found
that about 25% of breast cancers detected on mammograms and about 60% of
prostate cancers detected with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests could
represent overdiagnosis..

And when it comes to lung cancer screening with chest x-rays and sputum tests,
they estimate about half of the "cancers" detected are really cases of
overdiagnosis. What's more, CT colonography (virtual colonoscopy) often detects
abnormalities outside the colon that can lead to more tests and a possible
overdiagnosis of colon cancer, too.

The researchers pointed out several ways to address the problem of
overdiagnosis. For starters, they suggested educating patients about the risks
and benefits involved with early detection. Another strategy: raising the
threshold at which screening test results are labeled 'abnormal' and treatment
is needed.

This is already happening in some cases. For example, so many small lung
nodules are detected on CT scans that it is now becoming more common for
physicians to ignore many of these small abnormalities as just that -- small
abnormalities -- instead of rushing into this-looks-like-cancer-let's-treat-it-
aggressively mode.

In an editorial accompanying the report by Dr. Black and Dr. Welch, Laura
Esserman, M.D., of the University of California, San Francisco, and Ian
Thompson of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio,
agreed that addressing the problem of cancer overdiagnosis is critically
important.

"What we need now in the field of cancer is the coming together of physicians
and scientists of all disciplines to reduce the burden of cancer death AND
cancer diagnosis," they wrote. "We must advocate for and demand innovation in
diagnosis and management, fueled by science, harnessing modeling, molecular,
and immunology tools to address this problem."

NaturalNews has previously reported on research into cancer overdiagnosis,
which is particularly rampant with prostate cancer. In fact, PSA testing has
resulted in over a million additional men being overdiagnosed with prostate
cancer and subjected to treatment they didn't need (http://www.naturalnews.
com/027193_c...).

For more information:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/...

Source:NaturalNews

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