Word: dcis
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...mammogram turned up something her radiologist thought was fishy. She had had a tumor seven years earlier that turned out to be benign. But this time was different. A biopsy confirmed that Ulene, the niece of former Today show medical expert Art Ulene, had ductal carcinoma in situ, or DCIS, a growth that is variously described as either an early-stage breast cancer or a precancerous lesion. "It was very confusing," says Ulene, a color stylist for Walt Disney TV Animation. "I needed to know more...
...will learn that they have breast cancer--up from a little more than 100,000 two decades ago. While the death rate from the disease has dropped modestly over the past decade, there is a growing sense of frustration among cancer experts. Part of the problem is DCIS. Thirty years ago, these miniature tumors, which usually don't spread into the rest of the body, were diagnosed in some 6% of breast-cancer patients. Today the ratio is closer to 20%, largely because of advances in detection techniques. Yet the treatment of choice is still surgery followed by radiation...
...future, however, it helps to know a little biology. Most breast cancers begin in the milk ducts, narrow passageways that radiate throughout the breast. A few cells, for reasons that are not completely understood, start accumulating genetic mistakes that cause them to grow abnormally. Eventually the cells develop into DCIS. The good thing about dcis cells is that they haven't spread beyond the milk duct. The bad thing is that they are malignant. "Some people call DCIS precancer, but it's not precancer," says Dr. Dennis Slamon, director of breast-cancer research at the UCLA School of Medicine...
That's what makes DCIS treatment so controversial. What if most of the tiny tumors that show up in high-resolution mammograms are the ones that grow the slowest or maybe even disappear of their own accord? It probably doesn't matter too much how quickly you treat these slow-growing tumors; most women would survive. And if that's the case, wouldn't it make sense to leave those tumors alone until you could figure out whether they are going to grow? Some breast-cancer experts even speculate that more women may die with these tumors in their breast...
...NUYS, Calif.: A California physician has developed a new diagnostic method for treating some breast cancer tumors. Dr. Melvin Silverstein, a surgical oncologist, announced a system Wednesday that could prevent excessive treatments that many women now undergo. The process assigns points to three characteristics of the common DCIS (for ductal carcinoma in situ) tumors. The tumor's final "score" determines whether it can be safely ignored, removed, or treated with radiation or a mastectomy. Now, tumors are often treated too aggressively with radiation or breast removal that may be unnecessary. "Right now we do not know which tumors are going...