Reuters news story re younger women
Reuters news story re younger women I was very alarmed to see the news story put out by reuters regarding the outcome for younger women and breast cancer I think the info is mis-guided in the way it is written if you take it literally as it offers no other info on stage grade etc it is frightening.
I have e-mailed them any other views on the way the story has been written.
Love
Sarah x
I totally agree… … with you sarah, i also didn’t like the comment that ‘breast cancer was rare in younger women’
when will these people wake up and smell the coffee!!!
it makes me so mad, there is a 18year old girl on breakthrough’s forum diagnosed in dec., now under going chemo!! and she’s not alone !!
i think the msg regarding younger women is being put over completely wrong, even the report kind of contradicts itself by saying,
a lot of younger women might ignore any lump/symptoms because they don’t think they could be effected by this disease!!!
as you say it offers no other info ie., stage, grade.
i’m glad you’ve e-mailed them, this a point i feel very strongly about
karen
Was it an edited-down article you read? When I googled it, the article I found said:
‘They focused on women with early breast cancer which had not spread beyond the breast and whose tumors were less than 2 cm (0.8 inches) in size.’ So, they did look at stage.
It is a frightening article, but I have yet to see an article say that age is not a risk factor. Undoubtedly oncologists now take this into account when drawing up treatments. I know mine did.
I wish they had been clearer about why breast cancer is so problematic in young women, which would bring in some factors of the factor you mention. Like a woman under 40 is twice as likely to have a her2 positive breast cancer (40% under 40 versus about 20% overall), which historically has been associated with a poor prognosis. Big advances have been made recently against her2 positive types, but the availability of herceptin is very much a postcode lottery, even for young women. Younger women are also more likely to be triple negative. More research is also needed into triple negatives, a very difficult type. Women also have an elevated risk of dying of breast cancer if they were diagnosed within five years of having had a baby or having breast fed, factors which would affect the under 45s much more than older women.
What I wanted to know was how far back the studies went and how the treatment that the women got compared with treatments now.
As far as I’m concerned… this message cannot be told loudly or bluntly enough. Breast cancer is a very dangerous disease for younger women (actually I thought this was already known before this study) .
After quite a while on breast cancer message boards, I am shocked by the number of young women who go to their doctor with a lump and are sent away with the message 'breast cancer does not happen at such a young age". Well, it does, and at such a young age it is a killer disease, even more than for older women. Doctors should not be ignoring it.
I wish… … i could shout that msg from the roof tops!!
i think the way the message is portrayed by the media is very mis-leading, and what worries me is that how many young women might find a lump and disregard it BECAUSE the message their getting is it’s RARE in younger women, which we know it isn’t.
Doctors and the medical profession in general have got to stop ignoring these facts, i would desperately love to see a screening process in place for younger women ie., ultrasound or thermascans,
which i’m lead to believe are better means of screening for younger women than mammograms because of the tissue density in younger women.
maybe i’m being unrealistic, i know i’m not that knowledgeable on these matters, and i know that unfortunately alot of things are not possible because there is not enough money available to be able to offer the service.
also because of my lack of knowledge, i don’t know, if a screening process in younger women would help to save lives, but i think it would, we’re obviously educating young women to be breast aware,
by examining themselves and geting to know there own bodies, but how many of these when concerned aren’t being taken seriously???
sorry to go on, doubt if what i’ve written makes much sense, its dificult sometimes to express the enourmounty of how i feel about this.
karen
By the way… … i also wish someone could say why so many younger women are being diagnosed, is it lifestyle, the pill, chemicals in our enviroment, in our food, or just bloody bad luck???