US Health News reports that based on the research conducted at the Women’s College Research Institute in Canada, only three percent will not die in 20 years after being diagnosed with early breast cancer.
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The New York Times breaks down this complex study: Up to 60,000 women a year get diagnosed with Stage 0 breast cancer; majority receive a lumpectomy, a masectomy or even a double masectomy; and this analysis questions whether those invasive treatments have any medically measurable impact.
For the study, researchers analyzed the data of more than 100,000 with DCIS from 1998 to 2011.
Researchers at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health in Boston have revealed that the risk of breast cancer was greatly increased with just one glass of alcohol per day.
Nevertheless, past studies had shown that only high doses of alcoholic beverages could trigger cancer in drinkers. The influential factors like body mass index, family cancer history, history of cancer, smoking, diet, physical activity levels, age, and ethnicity were all taken into account for the study.
Dr. Richard Bleicher, a breast cancer expert at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, noted that the study lacked information that may have influenced women’s outcomes, including whether younger women who died had genetic mutations that may have put them at risk. “Light” drinking is one daily drink for women, and a maximum of two drinks for men, according to CBS News.
Narod said he believes the death rate would be higher than 3.3 per cent if women with DCIS did not have surgeries to remove the cancerous cells – though how much higher would be a guess.
They assessed risk of total cancer and known alcohol related cancers including cancer of the colorectum, female breast, liver, oral cavity, pharynx, larynx and esophagus. They extracted data on women who received a diagnosis of DCIS from 1988 to 2011 (108,196 women).
Until that happens, some women with DCIS who were never at risk of breast cancer will opt for surgery and treatment and others will opt not to be treated and may develop breast cancer.
In addition, risk of death increases upon diagnosis of an ipsilateral second primary invasive breast cancer, and prevention of recurrence by radiotherapy may not diminish mortality at 10 years in these patients. We now know that breast cancer encompasses a range of behaviors, from aggressive to indolent; the latter are more likely to surface with screening.
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“It is therefore appropriate to consider these as de facto breast cancers and not as pre-invasive markers predictive of a subsequent invasive cancer”, Narod’s team wrote.
