Experts suggest renaming low risk conditions labelled as cancer

Australian researchers have asked for changes in the way doctors tend to label low risk cancerous conditions as “cancer” leading to over treatment. Certain diagnoses such as localised prostate cancer or “stage 0” breast cancers need to be looked at say the researchers at the University of Sydney and Bond University to prevent aggressive treatment where it is not needed.

The researchers published their analysis in the British Medical Journal this week saying that for patients who are told they have “cancer” the choices are usually more aggressive treatments compared to patients who are told they have “abnormal lesions”. Ray Moynihan, senior research fellow at Bond University and an author of the analysis said, “The evidence suggests to us that it is time to stop telling people with a very low-risk condition that they have ‘cancer’ if they are very unlikely to be harmed.”

Lead researcher Brooke Nickel from University of Sydney school of Public Health said that for many “slow growing precancerous lesions” patients could not cope with the active surveillance. In slow growing lesions the general advice is to look for changes and growth in the lesion over fixed intervals before treatment can be initiated.

This form of active surveillance before treatment is called “watchful waiting”. Many patients find it difficult to “wait” before starting therapy when told they could have cancer says Nickel. “These patients report not being able to think of anything else and are driven to do anything to get rid of it. It can be terrifying, and rightly so,” Nickel said. She added, “It has been ingrained over decades that cancer is always scary and causes death... But when there is evidence that a condition is low risk and could be overdiagnosed and overtreated, calling it a cancer might do them more harm than good.”

Full article: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20180812/Removing-the-cancer-label-overhaul-in-cancer-classification-proposed.aspx

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