Dinner with my Family

Family gatherings centered on two things – food, and talk about medicine. We spoke of interesting cases (always nameless), challenging conditions and, even back then, the constraints of health care costs. My fiancé, now husband of over 20 years, couldn’t get over how debate over health care dominated our Rosh Hashanah and Thanksgiving feasts…

…when I learned I had breast cancer, I knew exactly what to do. The decisions, though difficult, were almost straightforward, buttressed by my knowledge and familiarity with the language of medicine…

Posted in Communication, Empowered Patient, Life as a Doctor, Life as a Patient, Medical Education, Patient-Doctor RelationshipTagged , , , , , 5 Comments on Dinner with my Family

Another Take on Mammography

Three key issues have escaped the headlines: 1. The expert panel carried out a careful analysis using data that are, necessarily, old; 2. The recommendations don’t apply to digital mammography; 3. Mammograms are not all the same.

We need to set the bar higher for mammography…

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Getting the Math on Mammograms

But consider – if the expert panel’s numbers are off just a bit, by as little as one or two more lives saved per 1904 women screened, the insurers could make a profit!

By my calculation, if one additional woman at a cost of, say, $1 million, is saved among the screening group, the provider might break even. And if three women in the group are saved by the procedure, the decision gets easier…

Now, imagine the technology has advanced, ever so slightly, that another four or five women are saved among the screening lot.

How could anyone, even with a profit motive, elect not to screen those 2000 women?

Posted in Breast Cancer, cancer screening, cancer treatment, Diagnosis, health care costs, Medical Ethics, Medical News, Policy, Women's HealthTagged , , , , , , 1 Comment on Getting the Math on Mammograms

To Screen is Human

Smack in the midst of October-is-breast-cancer-awareness-month, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a provocative article with a low-key title: “Rethinking Screening for Breast Cancer and Prostate Cancer.” The authors examined trends in screening, diagnosis and deaths from cancer over two decades, applied theoretical models to the data and found a seemingly disappointing result.

It turns out that standard cancer screening is imperfect.

The subject matters, especially to me. I’m a medical oncologist and a breast cancer survivor, spared seven years ago from a small, infiltrating ductal carcinoma by one radiologist, an expert physician who noted an abnormality on my first screening mammogram…

Posted in Breast Cancer, cancer screening, Diagnosis, Medical News, Oncology (cancer), Women's HealthTagged , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment on To Screen is Human
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