A BREAST CANCER BOOM is coming….ARE WE READY?

The new prediction from the National Cancer Institute states that by 2030 the incidence of breast caner will rise by 50%.One question you may ask is why?Well, thanks to the Baby Boom generation, more people are entering their twilight years; our country’s increased life expectancy means more women have a chance of developing breast cancer at some point in their lives; and certain lifestyle trends have led to a sharp rise (expected to continue) in the number of tumors receptive to the hormone estrogen (known as ER-positive breast cancers). More women delaying childbirth longer and choosing to breastfeed leads to this “favorable” subtype trend.

I think the more important question to ask is “what are we going to do about it?”

Research in cancer, particularly breast cancer, is in an age of awe, as we hear about new innovative ways to prolong life and delay progression almost daily. Yet screening and diagnosis is becoming problematic, as controversy surrounds mammogram recommendations, biopsy errors are made, and over diagnosis and over treatment of non-life-threatening cancers plague the medical community.

Our resources are precious, and the only thing we can agree upon so far is that doing a mammogram on every female over age 40 doesn’t increase our yield of early diagnosis!

Education, especially with regards to self-breast exams, needs to be focused on. OBGYN’s should be reviewing this with every patient who comes in. These same OBGYN’s need to know the research shows we unneccesarily biopsy many nodules we find.

Chemotherapy is not for everyone. What are we going to do with the 80+year old patients who develop tumors that may not be rapidly growing? Offer them chemotherapy? OK, but what else can we give them as an option? Increasing our focus on end of life quality of care is becoming more and more imperative.

Palliative care needs to be expanded. That means more doctors and therapists entering the field of geriatrics and hospice. Educating healthcare providers to deal with the choices these patients will have in an empathic manner is key. This all means that medical schools need to include these topics and career choices in their curriculum.

Living until we are elderly is a wonderful thing, except that it increases our chances of developing cancer. As women age in particular, all of us will either be affected by breast cancer or have a loved one with it. It’s time to start focusing on therapies that not only increase our life span but also increase its quality.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…/breast-cancers-predicted-t…/