Can confirm.
Due to late/lazy screening, my cancer was caught late and now I'm fighting an uphill battle.
It doesn't seem like rocket science to screen early but also not over-treat.
Due to late/lazy screening, my cancer was caught late and now I'm fighting an uphill battle.
It doesn't seem like rocket science to screen early but also not over-treat.
I would argue though that it's not rocket science...currently, it's a lot harder with many more unknowns. Some of the issues we face are:
- Imperfect screening tests: the (very real) risk of both false positives and false negatives
- Lack of great prognostic models: if we think a certain cancer has a 25% chance of metastasizing within 5 years and I have 4 patients in front of me, how do I know which is the one?
- How do we identify if we're actually changing the trajectory of cancer with certain treatments? If a treatment fails, is it because we didn't choose the right treatment or is it reflective of underlying aggressive disease biology?
- Mass amounts of data from new technologies: this is obviously great and has allowed us to become granular with cancer in a way we haven't been able to before. It's important to recognize that widespread next generation sequencing is something we've had for less than a decade, and we have identified a lot of risk factors with this BUT it's also raised many questions (e.g. what mutations are actually significant?).
- Being human: every individual has their own values. Some patients will hear that it's a 1% chance this will become cancer and be okay with monitoring it. Some patients hear 1% and think it's too much of a risk and want intervention.
I think, with time and more data, we will become a lot better at this. But it's really not easy.