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Friday, October 11, 2002For example, Dr. Brenner said, a woman with ovarian cancer may have been told that she has a 35 percent chance of surviving 20 years; in fact, she probably has at least a 50 percent chance of living that long. I'm trying to remember the last time I saw someone live twenty years after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. I can't remember anyone. It depends, of course, on the type of cancer and how it was found. Most ovarian cancers aren't discovered until they're large and have spread. We simply have no good way to screen for them. Others might be found serendipitously during a hysterectomy or oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries) for other reasons. The latter group of patients can be expected to have quite long survival rates and no recurrence, thus skewing the average upward. The reality is better expressed by the biostatistician from MD Anderson: But Dr. Donald Berry, head of biostatistics at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, cautioned that the study might have little or no effect on what patients hear from their doctors. "No clinician — well, almost no clinician," Dr. Berry said, would simply quote to a patient the overall survival numbers for a type of cancer. Any good doctor making a prognosis, he said, takes into account the size of a tumor, how far it has spread, the patient's age, success rates of new treatments and other factors. posted by Sydney on 10/11/2002 08:20:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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