3 ms·
Can confirm. Due to late/lazy screening, my cancer was caught late and now I'm fighting an uphill battle. It doesn't seem like rocket science to screen early
by glonq 3y ago
Can confirm.
Due to late/lazy screening, my cancer was caught late and now I'm fighting an uphill battle.
It doesn't seem like rocket science to screen early but also not over-treat.
- meepmorp 3y agoI hope you win your battle.
- tetramer 3y agoHey friend, I'm so sorry you're going through that and I wish you the best of luck in your journey. I would argue though that it's not rocket science...currently, it's a lot harder with many more unknowns. Some of the issues we face are: - Imperfect screening tests: the (very real) risk of both false positives and false negatives - Lack of great prognostic models: if we think a certain cancer has a 25% chance of metastasizing within 5 years and I have 4 patients in front of me, how do I know which is the one? - How do we identify if we're actually changing the trajectory of cancer with certain treatments? If a treatment fails, is it because we didn't choose the right treatment or is it reflective of underlying aggressive disease biology? - Mass amounts of data from new technologies: this is obviously great and has allowed us to become granular with cancer in a way we haven't been able to before. It's important to recognize that widespread next generation sequencing is something we've had for less than a decade, and we have identified a lot of risk factors with this BUT it's also raised many questions (e.g. what mutations are actually significant?). - Being human: every individual has their own values. Some patients will hear that it's a 1% chance this will become cancer and be okay with monitoring it. Some patients hear 1% and think it's too much of a risk and want intervention. I think, with time and more data, we will become a lot better at this. But it's really not easy.