<p>Very similar story here. My dad has been diagnosed with lung cancer when he wes 64 or 65. Huge exposure to toxins through work - he was a welder. He had an entire lung removed. Disease did not spread into his lymph nodes. He had a very difficult time adjusting to such drastically decreased lung capacity, plus the fact that he quit smoking on the day of surgery did not help his mental healing at all.
He was basically told that he was a very lucky man, that it was the kind that spread slowly (non small) and there was no evidence of spreading outside the lung tissue. They still wanted to follow up, initially every 3 months. X-rays, scans, brain study, blood study. My dad could only take it for a year, then decided he is not going to be compliant any more and quit seing the oncologist. He believed that his mental sanity was more important at that stage. He lived for 8 or 9 years agter the surgery. He never had any symptoms of metastatic disease. Died suddenly one summer morning while working in the garden. The most probable cause of death was stroke. It might have been due to his hx of cancer, it might have not. But I am convinced my dad died the way he wanted to .</p>
<p>I am also shcoked by the fact that breast cancer diagnosis is so common nowdays and was not in my mom/grandma age. My mom knows exactly one friend that had the disease. Grandma most likely none. I am still young but had already have several friends that have been diagnosed with lumps that have been there poked, scanned, biopsied and you name it, just to find out it was benign. I wonder what all this poking does to the breast tissue.</p>
<p>Now for what it is worth, I am going to give you TMI, so some of you might want to tune out
I hate bras. My breasts are not especially large and they are fairly in shape, still, so it is very, very common for me to do not wear a bra if I have a sweater or a jacket on.
The very first thing I remove when I get back home is my bra - I simply can’t stand it! I feel so free and unrestricted when I do not have it on! All bras bother me, not just the underwire ones. I will never in a million years understand women who sleep in their bras.</p>
<p>^ Yes, while this option is still available and you do not need to go to India to get medical help for cash. Some Medicare patients do not have this option, doctors are not allowed to take them for cash or even private insurance if they happen to have one. This is in our future with Public Option Helthcare. One of the reasons that government wants us to stop self-examinations and reduce number of tests.</p>
MiamiDAP - I have read your posts and can’t seem to make sense out of them. Your grammar and spelling are so terrible I find myself exausted from the reading and re-reading.
However, if <em>the government</em> wanted us to stop self-examination and reduce testing then they would quit telling us to get colonoscopies and pap smears.
Your logic is not quite flowing …</p>
<p>I am sorry, your logic does not make sense to me either. Colonoscopies and papsmears have nothing to do with breast self-examinations. They cannot dump all kind of recommendation on our heads, one at a time. Have patients, the next one is coming. I also do not understand why do you need to understand me, just ignore me, isn’t it much easier?</p>
<p>For those of you who disagree with these recommendations, I have to ask why you want women to get exposed to radiation, in a procedure that is at least annoying if not painful, if it doesn’t do any good? </p>
<p>Let me say that again. The doctors are saying that routine screening for women ages 40-50 doesn’t do any good. We can wish it increased breast cancer survival, but it doesn’t. Routine screening in younger women, it seems, is finding slow-growing tumors that would have been found soon enough even without the mammogram, and fast-growing tumors for which there is no treatment that increases survival rates.</p>
<p>All I will say is that my aunt at the age of 33 and another non maternal aunt at 45 both had breast cancer and if it were not for the mammography they had, they might be dead. </p>
<p>They both went in for routine screenings. We had no breast cancer known in our family at that time.</p>
<p>You have absolutely no basis for claiming it DID DO GOOD!!!1111Eleven</p>
<p>You don’t know what would have happened if the cancers had not been detected at the time they were detected. However, if the routine screening of women 40-50 were causing women to survive who otherwise would have died, then we should be seeing a reduction of breast cancer deaths in that age group. We’re not.</p>
<p>Well, since the screening for the 33 year old was never part of the recommendations, nothing was changed for her. That is not a “routine” screening, and never was, unless there was another reason for it, such as family history. And the new regulations take that into account, still.</p>
<p>And, back to the point just previously made, you have no way of knowing that a later mammogram would have changed their survival chances. The point is, again, that most cancers caught early were the slow-growing, not liable to be dangerous ones, which are amenable to treatment later on.</p>
<p>And most fast growing ones, no matter when caught, are not amenable to treatment.</p>
<p>I’m very glad that your family members are doing well!!!</p>
<p>“You have absolutely no basis for claiming it DID DO GOOD!!!1111Eleven”</p>
<p>“YES WE ABSOLUTELY DO KNOW IT DID GOOD” Both aunts did not know they had cancer and both had mammograms and both came out finding out about it. They both felt fine going in no noticeable symptoms and if they hadn’t have had those mammograms they would not have known as the lumps were deep inside their breasts and could not feel them. And, to top it off the doctors told my aunt the the cancer was spreading into the Lymph Nodes and she probably would have died if they had not found this when they did. She had a double mastectomy and went through major chemo and has been in remission for 15 years now.</p>
<p>Many people believe because we are seeing an increase in toxins in our environment and poor diets, stress and other factors that is the reason we are seeing increases. Our food and water supplies have changed drastically over the last 30 years and there are large areas of the country that happen to see much larger rates of cancer too.</p>
<p>No one’s holding them down on the table and forcing them to have it done. It needs to be available as a “choice” made after careful consultation with their doctor and consideration of the risk/benefits.</p>
<p>Think of it this way: is “50” a scientifically determined number when it does good, whereas it’s not necessary at 49.5? The problem is not the recommendation, but that the government and insurance companies will use it as justification to deny reimbursement regardless of their physician’s recommendation.</p>
<p>But why did the 33-year-old have a mammogram? This wasn’t recommended for that age group under the old recommendations, so it couldn’t be a routine screening. Was there family history or something?</p>
The recommendations still call for mammograms for persons with risk factors, in consultation with their physicians. Of course, insurance companies may deny reasonable claims, just as they do now.</p>
<p>“Some Medicare patients do not have this option, doctors are not allowed to take them for cash or even private insurance if they happen to have one.”</p>
<p>Could you cite your source that “some” patients on Medicare are barred from paying private doctors in cash for an X-ray? How would Medicare even know they had done so?</p>
<p>The task force was composed of primary care physicians–internists, family practitioners, pediatricians, Ob/Gyn’s. There were no oncologists or breasts specialists on the panel. </p>
<p>"The mission of the USPSTF is to evaluate the benefits of individual services based on age, gender, and risk factors for disease; make recommendations about which preventive services should be incorporated routinely into primary medical care and for which populations; and identify a research agenda for clinical preventive care.
Background and Mission</p>
<p>The Task Force makes its recommendations on the basis of explicit criteria. Recommendations issued by the USPSTF are intended for use in the primary care setting. The USPSTF recommendation statements present health care providers with information about the evidence behind each recommendation, allowing clinicians to make informed decisions about implementation."</p>
<p>This is about decisions for populations, not for individuals. Not every one will fall into the group that the recommendations cover. We just need to be careful that this is not recommended across the board. There are high risk groups that do not fall under these rec’s. But individual patients may not realize this. </p>
<p>I do not own a mammogram unit. I am not aware that I profit in any way from the recommendations that I make regarding mammograms. </p>
<p>Can some women skip mammograms before 50 and after 75-- sure. If individual physicians and patients are not careful about screening higher risk patients, will breast cancer be missed in some patients-- yes. Will some patients die as a result of not getting a mammogram until age 50, yes. Will the dollars saved by not doing as many mammograms and biopsies be MORE than the money spent treating the breast cancers that will be found later, most likely. Society will benefit from a monetary standpoint while individuals patients may suffer as a consequence. </p>
<p>But uninformed patients will not get mammograms they need because they will assume they are low risk when they are not. </p>
<p>“d’smom–are you recommending all women be screened yearly in their 30’s? 20’s? Before?”</p>
<p>No, what I would recommend is something entirely different. I would recommend that all women beginning in their late twenties have biannual sonography which has been around forever and catches breast cancer much earlier. The other added benefit is that there is no radiation. If the argument is about radiation, then lets use the better, less invasive technology. But of course we all know that this would cost a little bit more more money so therefore we don’t get this treatment that we should.</p>
<p>Mammography is an obsolete technology (X-rays have been around for ages, and the only improvement here is the dose and computerized readout); it is a crutch that slows down the development of new, safer cancer detection techniques (with low costs and high throughput). Many belive that mammography is the gold standard in breast cancer detection and prevention. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. It is broken, it is radiation, although in lower doses.</p>
<p>Sorry, but we really do not know. This is all anecdotal. It is not first hand evidence.
Actually, 15-20 years ago mastectomies and double mastectomies were much more popular then they are now. </p>
<p>Cancer is a very scary word in our society. We do not want to live with it, we want it out as quickly as possible, at all costs.
Cancer prevention is really cancer screening. Someone has already mentioned it before.
Mammograms do not prevent cancers. They detect them. Why won’t we spend money on real cancer prevention? Instead of a routine mammogram at 40, why aren’t women asked to see a nutritionist, why aren’t they asked to loose weight (through an actual insurance covered program). Why is the HFCS so cheap due to government grants or whatever, why isn’t broccoli subsidized?</p>
<p>Not long ago a woman in her early 50 underwent double knee replacement. She weighted at 350 lb. Was I her doctor - she would have to undergo some serious weight reduction before I would exchange her joints.
A friend of mine had a knee surgery due to the sports accident. He tried to go without it, but the insurance was only covering that many physiotheraphy sessions. He finally relented and had a surgery. Recovery time - good 8 months. He would have been exactly where he is now with only therapy. Actualy his own ortho said that. Insurance company was willing to pay for a surgery rather than physical therapy. Do you see anything wrong with this picture???</p>
