Will 30% of Early Stage (1-IIIA) go on to metastasize??
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Tessa, which statistic from Selena are you referring to?
The 30% stat has been clarified by Momine (thanks so much for that!!), who explained that the 30% "is the average recurrence of all breast cancers if not treated with systemic therapy (chemo, tamox, AI)"
As for the single MX vs. bilateral MX decision, it's important to understand that whatever your risk of metastasis, it won't be changed at all by your surgical choice. The risk of mets is unique to each of us (the 30% stat is a very broad average, not the risk for any one individual) but whatever any individual's personal risk, it will be the unchanged whether she has a lumpectomy, a mastectomy or a bilateral mastectomy.0 -
Also wanted to add that the 98% figure emanates from a number of sources, I did a quick google and got National Breast Cancer Foundation, another source that cited ACS but cherry-picked the stat out of their statistical data without explanation that it included in situ BC, Breast Cancer Research Foundation, to name a few. They are including DCIS/LCIS, along with early stage invasive cancers, and painting a more optimistic picture than truly exists - also the time cut-off linked to this statistic is 5 years. So it is 98% if detected early, including non-invasive cancers, up to 5 years. Pretty misleading.0 -
Thanks Momine for tracking that down and contacting the source! And thanks Special K for the 98% info too. Misleading the general public either way (good or bad) really irritates me.0 -
Momine ~ I also edited the original post to include your information!
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Happy to be of service0 -
Momine! Yay for you! Thanks so much! (And you too Special K!)
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You know, I was just thinking about the further implications of the statistic, Momine. So basically it is saying that 70% of women will be "cured" from surgery alone? That's pretty good odds and also means the majority of us are overtreated.0 -
Well I've been lurking for a bit here. Some of you know me anyway. Yeah many of us are over treated. Even my onc said that to me when I first met her. The problem she said is they just can't figure out who that is. I'm a higher stage than you guys but was told that women my age (at the time) with my diagnosis had a 40% chance of only needed surgery and still be NED in 10 years. She said if they knew who those 40% were they would not be giving them chemo or endocrine therapy.
Thing is if your one of the 30% in your situations or one of the 58% in my situation it doesn't matter… you want the treatment. Even with treatment my odds of recurrence in the 10 years was still 16%… and I was like "that high!" Granted it's been 3 years so that percentage is going down. But I know 30% would have been way too high for me.0 -
Hi lago!
Yes, I agree that 30% is too high for me personally. Just looking at it from a different perspective, it is reassuring (at least to me) to know that 70% of us go on to never have to deal with this again ~ even if they choose for whatever reason to not do chemo or hormonal therapy.0 -
It's sort of like flood insurance, you buy it but hope you will never need it.
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LOL ruthbru - for years, I had to pay for flood insurance on my first house.
Then I got a notice telling me that due to engineering and agricultural and geographical blah blah blah that changed the landscape, my house was no longer considered to be in a flood zone... and that because my area would never flood, I wouldn't need to have the insurance any more.
I wish I'd get a letter like that telling me I am no longer in a Mandatory Aromatase Inhibitor Zone, and that I can drop the insurance!!!
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Here is an interesting article!
Study: Radiation Therapy Can Make Cancers 30x More Malignant
Following on the heels of recent revelations thatx-ray mammographymay be contributing to an epidemic of future radiation-induced breast cancers, in a new article titled, "Radiation Treatment Generates Therapy Resistant Cancer Stem Cells From Aggressive Breast Cancer Cells," published in the journalCancerJuly 1st, 2012, researchers from the Department of Radiation Oncology at the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center report thatradiation treatment actually drives breast cancer cells into greater malignancy.
The researchers found that even when radiation kills half of the tumor cells treated, the surviving cells which are resistant to treatment, known as induced breast cancer stem cells (iBCSCs), were up to30 times more likely to form tumorsthan the nonirradiated breast cancer cells. In other words, the radiation treatment regresses the total population of cancer cells, generating the false appearance that the treatment is working, but actually increases the ratio of highly malignant to benign cells within that tumor, eventually leading to the iatrogenic (treatment-induced) death of the patient.
Last month, a related study published in the journalStem Cellstitled, "Radiation-induced reprogramming of breast cells," found that ionizing radiation reprogrammed less malignant (more differentiated) breast cancer cells into iBCSCs, helping to explain why conventional treatment actually enriches the tumor population with higher levels oftreatment-resistant cells.[i]
A growing body of research now indicts conventional cancer treatment with chemotherapy and radiation as a major contributing cause of cancer patient mortality. The primary reason for this is the fact that cancer stem cells, which are almost exclusively resistant to conventional treatment, are not being targeted, but to the contrary, are encouraged to thrive when exposed to chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
In order to understand how conventional treatment drives the cancer into greater malignancy, we must first understand what cancer is....
What Are Cancer Stem Cells, And Why Are They Resistant To Treatment?
Tumors are actually highly organized assemblages of cells, which are surprisingly well-coordinated for cells that are supposed to be the result of strictly random mutation. They are capable of building their own blood supply (angiogenesis), are able to defend themselves by silencing cancer-suppression genes, secreting corrosive enzymes to move freely throughout the body, alter their metabolism to live in low oxygen and acidic environments, and know how to remove their own surface-receptor proteins to escape detection by white blood cells. In a previous article titled "Is Cancer An Ancient Survival Program Unmasked?" we delved deeper into this emerging view of cancer as an evolutionary throw-back and not a byproduct of strictly random mutation.
Because tumors are not simply the result of one or more mutated cells "going rogue" and producing exact clones of itself (multi-mutational and clonal hypotheses), but are a diverse group of cells having radically different phenotypal characteristics, chemotherapy and radiation will affect each cell type differently.
Tumors are composed of a wide range of cells, many of which are entirely benign.
The most deadly cell type within a tumor or blood cancer, known ascancer stem cells (CSCs),has the ability to give rise to all the cell types found within that cancer.
They are capable of dividing by mitosis to form either two stem cells (increasing the size of the stem population), or one daughter cell that goes on to differentiate into a variety of cell types, and one daughter cell that retains stem-cell properties.
This means CSCs are tumorigenic (tumor-forming) andshould bethe primary target of cancer treatment because they are capable of both initiating and sustaining cancer. They are also increasingly recognized to be the cause of relapse and metastasis following conventional treatment.
CSCs are exceptionally resistant to conventional treatment for the following reasons
The existence of CSCs explains why conventional cancer treatment has completely missed the boat when it comes to targeting the root cause of tumors. One reason for this is because existing cancer treatments have mostly been developed in animal models where the goal is to shrink a tumor. Because mice are most often used and their life spans do not exceed two years, tumor relapse is very difficult, if not impossible to study.
The first round of chemotherapy never kills the entire tumor, but only a percentage. This phenomenon is called the fractional kill. The goal is to use repeated treatment cycles (usually six) to regress the tumor population down to zero, without killing the patient.
What normally occurs is that the treatment selectively kills the less harmful populations of cells (daughter cells), increasing the ratio of CSCs to benign and/or less malignant cells. This is not unlike what happens when antibiotics are used to treat certain infections. The drug may wipe out 99.9% of the target bacteria, but .1% have or develop resistance to the agent, enabling the .1% to come back even stronger with time.
The antibiotic, also, kills the other beneficial bacteria that help the body fight infection naturally, in the same way that chemotherapy kills the patient's immune system (white blood cells and bone marrow), ultimately supporting the underlying conditions making disease recurrence more likely.
The reality is that the chemotherapy, even though it has reduced the tumor volume, by increasing the ratio of CSCs to benign daughter cells, has actually made the cancer more malignant.
Radiotherapyhas also been shown to increase cancer stem cells in the prostate, ultimately resulting in cancer recurrence and worsened prognosis.[iii] Cancer stem cells may also explain why castration therapy often fails in prostate cancer treatment.[iv]
Non-Toxic Natural Substances Which Target and Kill CSCs
Natural compounds have been shown to exhibit three properties which make them suitable alternatives to conventional chemotherapy and radiotherapy:
The primary reason why these substances are not used in conventional treatment is because they arenot patentable, nor profitable. Sadly, the criteria for drug selection are not safety, effectiveness, accessibility and affordability. If this were so, natural compounds would form an integral part of the standard of care in modern cancer treatment.
Research indicates that the following compounds (along with common dietary sources) have the ability to target CSCs:
Additional research found on the GreenMedInfo.com Multidrug Resistance page indicate over 50 compounds inhibitmultidrug resistance cancersin experimental models.
[i]Radiation-induced reprogramming of breast cancer cells. Stem Cells. 2012 May ;30(5):833-44. PMID:22489015
[ii]Human acute myeloid leukemia is organized as a hierarchy that originates from a primitive hematopoietic cell. Nat Med. 1997 Jul ;3(7):730-7. PMID:9212098
[iii]Long-term recovery of irradiated prostate cancer increases cancer stem cells. Prostate. 2012 Apr 18. Epub 2012 Apr 18. PMID:22513891
[iv]Stem-Like Cells with Luminal Progenitor Phenotype Survive Castration in Human Prostate Cancer. Stem Cells. 2012 Mar 21. Epub 2012 Mar 21. PMID:22438320
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Joellelee... The above reference you've sourced ends with the comment, "... Dr. Pajonk says the study does not discredit radiation therapy. “Patients come to me scared by the idea that radiation generates these cells, but it truly is the safest and most effective therapy there is.”
Radiation therapy is very, very far from the big buggaboo most naturalists believe it to be. And most naturalists take the knowledge slightly out-of-context and state that radiation makes the cells more malignant; it doesn't. What the studies are saying is that there are cancer stem cells that are resistent to radiation (and chemotherapy), which can lead to recurrence. This has been well-known for years. For the majority of patients, chemotherapy and radiation are effective and safe therapies, but for some, they have little effect on the resistent cancer stem cells.
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Was just food for thought for those 'on the fence'...I would be very scared as well if I had done chemo and/or rads. very happy I did not. Again, I will quote what I answered you with in a previous post...The author also states...
Natural compounds have been shown to exhibit three properties which make them suitable alternatives to conventional chemotherapy and radiotherapy:
The primary reason why these substances are not used in conventional treatment is because they arenot patentable, nor profitable. Sadly, the criteria for drug selection are not safety, effectiveness, accessibility and affordability. If this were so, natural compounds would form an integral part of the standard of care in modern cancer treatment.
I was NOT intending to start an argument...we are all providing resources for each other.
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The primary reason these natural compounds have not been used as standard-of-care treatment of cancer is that most of them have not survived scientific scrutiny and clinical trials. Period. There is NO BIG PHARMA CONSPIRACY.
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Not speaking of conspiracy...speaking of big business and money...speaking logically. People use the word conspiracy as a fear mongering tactic so as to not look at the issue any further.
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Not speaking of conspiracy...speaking of big business and money...speaking logically. People use the word conspiracy as a fear mongering tactic so as to not look at the issue any further.
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I can understand how 'conspiracy' can feel like a comfort zone for those who are afraid to look any further.
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Common sense on why they can not survive a patent! They are natural substances! It would be like trying to patent broccoli!
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Oh, please...
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Gee, they patented that pacific yew tree stuff. What was it? Oh, yes, taxol.
Edited to clarify; the tree is not patented and "stuff' is a rather inarticulate way of referring to substances obtained from the tree to make Taxol. Mea culpa.0 -
Selenawolf...I would think a "practicing witch" such as yourself would be all into the 'au natural?"
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As if alternative therapies aren't big business! ROFLMAO!
P.S. Tamoxifen was derived from a "natural substance," the Pacific yew tree. Medical science does not discriminate against natural substances, IF they work.0 -
They didn't really patent Pacific yew...I can get it over the counter and I know some people who forage for it. Your knowledge on pacific yew is limited.
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Tamoxifen was derived from the Pacific yew tree. I did not say they patented the tree!0 -
I pay very little for Wong's herbs and my supplements compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars that big Pharma and Insurance companies gain on conventional therapies...
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I guess I knew this would be a touchy subject and knew some of you would be closed minded. This is the complimentary forum where we all provide ALL sides of info. Of course, those of you so close minded are the ones trying to rip my posts apart. So much for freedom of info and info sharing!
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Fortunately, few here pay much attention to risky alternative therapies, even when adherents limit themselves to their own forum.0 -
Actually, I am one of those who has gone on to metastasize. I was diagnosed in 2010, went through neoadjuvent chemo, radiation, and removal of what was essentially only scar tissue by the end of it all. I also had a few lymph nodes removed as a prophylactic measure. Two weeks ago, I went in for an MRI after having had terrible hip pain for the past few months, only to discover that my original breast cancer had metastasized to my femur, my lung, and a couple of brachial lymph nodes. Lucky me! Here I am, only weeks away from being 3 years clear. (Although, I suppose this had been happening for awhile to have gotten to a few different places.) So, off I go to radiation, bisphosphenol treatments, and lifelong chemo and periodic scans. Never in a million years did I think it would come back, especially after it had responded so well and completely to the initial treatment. I totally agree, early detection does not mean cure. We need much more research, funded by more responsible organizations than Komen.
Thank you for the post!
Amyluya0 -
Interesting history on Tamoxifen...
http://www.projectcensored.org/2-chemical-corporations-profit-off-breast-cancer/
sniff...sniff...I smell a huge money trail.
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