If Your Physician Assumes You Just Have A Fibroid Cyst, You Might Not Find Out You Have Breast Cancer Until It Spreads
By: J. Hernandez
Submitted: 2010-08-14 13:38:09 | Word Count: 847
Women have faith that their doctors will understand the difference between a serious health problem and something that does not present any danger to their wellbeing. A particular issue to which this apples is with cancer of the breast. Female patients depend on doctors to obtain every proper tests whether it be physical breast examinations, a mammogram, an aspiration or a biopsy to find any cancer that may exist as early as feasible. The presence of a lump in a breast heightens worry immediately. And here is where the doctor can do the right thing or the wrong thing. In general, physicians acknowledge that the right thing is to conduct tests to figure out if that lump is cancerous. The reason most physicians agree that this is the appropriate course of action is because a physician cannot determine if the lump is cancerous or benign after just performing a physical examination (even when taken together with other variables like the female patient's age and family history).
There are 2 statistical realities doctors are aware of. Most changes that arise in the breast are noncancerous. Women oyunger than fifty are significantly less prone to be diagnosed with cancer of the breast than females above that age. Considering these two statistics some physicians generally dismiss a lump as just a benign cyst in case it arises in a woman younger than 50. It is just a matter of statistics. The chances are that a woman in that category does not have breast cancer.
[ advertisement ]
However, there is more to the matter. In the event breast cancer is diagnosed before it can reach a late stage (for example, stage 0, stage I or stage II), the five-year survival rate is usually at least 80%. The 5-year survival rate is a a number used by cancer specialists to discern the fraction of patients who survive the disease for a minimum five years following diagnosis. Therefore, a five-year survival rate higher than 80% means that, statistically, more than eighty out of every one hundred patients with a less advanced stage breast cancer will, given proper treatment, survive the disease for at least 5 years beyond detection.
When breast cancer spreads prior to diagnosis a woman's chances of surviving the cancer at least five years is drastically lessened. When the cancer gets to stage 3, her odds are diminished to roughly fifty-four percent. If the cancer gets to stage 4, those chances drop to approximately twenty percent. Thus, eighty percent or greater with early detection as opposed to fifty-four percent or lower with delayed diagnosis.
It is expected that 1 in 8 females will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their lifetime. It is the second prevalent cancer in women. More than one hundred ninety thousand females are expected to be newly diagnosed with invasive breast cancer this year. Moreover over forty nine thousand women are expected to pass away of breast cancer this year. Given that women whose breast cancer is diagnosed while still in the early stages have a greater than eighty percent expectation of outliving the cancer for over 5 years subsequent to diagnosis, a question that follows is how many of those forty thousand or more females who will die of this disease this year would otherwise continue leading their lives if their cancer had been no delay in diagnosing their cancer.
The challenge is that a number of doctors behave as though either that they can ascertain whether a mass in a woman's breast is cancerous or benign simply by manual examination or that a woman under fifty with no family history of breast cancer is so unlikely to have breast cancer that there is no need to order any diagnostic tests to eliminate cancer if she had a mass in her breast. Since most doctors would concur that discovering a lump in a female's breast ought to be followed by diagnostic testing, for example, an untrasound, mammogram, aspiration or biopsy. Only by using one or more of these tests can cancer be safely ruled out
In cases where a doctor concludes that a mass in the breast of a female patient as just a benign fibroid cyst based only on a clinical breast examination, that doctor puts the woman in danger of not finding out she has breast cancer until it metastasizes. Not performing proper diagnostic testing, including an imaging study such as a mammogram or ultrasound, or a sampling, such as a biopsy or aspiration, may constitute a departure from the accepted standard of medical care and might bring about a medical malpractice case.
Author Resource:-
Joseph Hernandez is an attorney accepting medical malpractice and wrongful death cases. To find out more breast cancer metastasis and other cancer matters including coloncancer and other cancer matters including visit the websites
