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Since outcomes vary so heavily depending on how early cancer is detected I wonder what scope there is for big improvements in testing. National programs for bre
by DharmaPolice 6y ago
Since outcomes vary so heavily depending on how early cancer is detected I wonder what scope there is for big improvements in testing. National programs for breast/cervical screening do seem to work but they're expensive (although still probably cost effective [0]) and by their nature can't be done very often. Will we ever get to the stage where we will be able to self-administer a test every 6 months to catch these things in the very earliest stages? Or is that just fantasy due to the nature of cancer?
0 - https://doi.org/10.2147/BCTT.S123558 https://doi.org/10.2147/BCTT.S123558
- gjulianm 6y agoNot a doctor, but from what I've read there are quite a lot of problems in the way: - Lead time bias. If you discover cancers early and patients survive more, is it because you're treating better or because you discovered (and started counting) earlier? - False positives and negatives. All tests will have them, and for low prevalence cancers it might mean that testing doesn't give too much information and just increases load on healthcare systems and puts patients through unnecessary tests and procedures. - Indolent diseases. Extensive testing might discover tumors that don't have symptoms and are not life-threatening, so you might treat people (with the risks associated) that didn't need to be treated. And that's if the tests themselves can be developed. Apparently there are a lot of types of cancer, each with different markers, behaviors, affecting different cells. It doesn't seem likely that a single test will be able to catch cancer in general.
- bluGill 6y agoIt is at least partially fantasy. There are a lot of cancers that grow in the body for a while and then just die off without causing any problems. Treating those cancers would be worse then letting them be. Not to mention all the mental baggage of "I have cancer". Then there is the problem of false positives which happen with most tests. Not all cancers grow fast. I've been told (read I'm not enough of an expert to evaluate the claim though it seems reasonable) there are some cancers that basically everybody has, but they grow so slowly that science won't worry about them until lifespans reach 150.
- bena 6y agoI forget where I saw it, but it said that the biggest predictor of whether or not you'll get cancer is time. The longer you live, the greater the chance you'll get cancer.
- foolinaround 6y ago> There are a lot of cancers that grow in the body for a while and then just die off without causing any problems. Wow, did not know this part! Is this common knowledge? If so, how is "a while" defined? How do we know which ones to just ignore?
- bluGill 6y agoI don't know. I have a friend who has almost no bone in his knee area, something that was only discovered when he broke is leg. The only explanation for that is a cancer the grew for a while then died out. I don't know how common this is, just that I know of one case where it is believed to happen. There are other cases of cancer going into remission after doctors gave up on any treatment working.
- nradov 6y agoEveryone who lives long enough will eventually get some form of cancer due to progressive accumulation of cellular damage. If you perform detailed autopsies of elderly patients who died of other causes you'll usually find some small cancerous tumors. This is one of several reasons why attempts to significantly extend maximum human lifetimes will probably fail.
- nwienert 6y agoThere are many promising drugs and therapies for restoring cellular damage and senescence, no one attempting to extend lifespan is ignoring that.
- Teever 6y agoBut there are animals that have tremendously longer lifespans that humans so there is no biological reason why we can't extend our lifespans.