You could be using the C-word less often with your patients if an eminent group of cancer scientists has its way.
A workgroup of cancer experts appointed by the
National Cancer Institute is proposing to eliminate the word “cancer” from certain diagnoses because the term scares patients and prompts providers to schedule numerous tests and procedures that likely aren’t needed,
The New York Times reports. The panel published its
recommendations in the July 29 Journal of the American Medical Association.
As an example, the panel cites premalignant conditions such as ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), which is not cancer, many doctors agree. The workgroup recommends that the term “carcinoma” be dropped from the diagnosis to ease patient fears that may prompt them to seek painful and possibly harmful treatments that may not be necessary, the Times report states.
The adjustment comes in response to increasingly sensitive screening methods that can pick up incidental findings – dubbed “incidentalomas” that may never impact a patient’s overall health. Yet once they discover it, both doctors and patients feel compelled to biopsy, treat and remove it, the Times says.
The NCI panel would like these findings to be reclassified as indolent lesions of epithelial origin or IDLE conditions. Besides the breast duct lesions, the group listed conditions affecting the prostate, thyroid lung and esophagus as potential IDLE conditions.
Not all doctors are ready to scale back their cancer diagnoses yet, though. A bigger problem is that doctors can’t tell, for example, which cases of DCIS will turn into an aggressive cancer and which ones won’t, Dr. Larry Norton at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center tells the Times.