8 ms·
I had a double mastectomy – then discovered a terminal tumour in my liver
- ggm 5y agoThe stoicism and acceptance in this story is amazing. Well done. Diagnostic medicine is great, but appears bound up in "we're looking under the lamppost because the light is there" problems: diagnosis of the large mass in the liver has a feel of how tissue density affects recognition of the tumour. The bone cancer probably wasn't caught then because it's found by a different use of diagnostic techniques and screening. I think I still hope for a whole body predictive scan which can find early signs without having to be told to focus on specific organs or parts of the body.
- nradov 5y agoLiquid biopsies are going to be more useful than imaging scans for early cancer detection.
- ggm 5y agoA trained medico will doubtless correct me so as a non medico I think you're right and I believe in early screening and have my 60yo bloods and bowel/poo scanning done regularly. That be said, young women are very likely to be misdiagnosed for things like cancer because being physically fit and menstruating can give heaps of non cancer originated reasons for being tired, in pain which do not stem from cancer. Misdiagnosed endometriosis comes to mind as a similar diagnostic problem: obvious once you get inside, often missed. With early cancer blood screening I believe the problem remains its far more likely to be a false positive than a false negative. Doctors have to work from a range of signals to a range of causes which may co present or be false flags. The ones which miss are like aircraft flight failure "holes in the cheesegrater lined up" series of unfortunate consequences to diagnosis lead to missing things. Elizabeth Holmes didn't do us any favours either.