November 23, 2009 - Breast Cancer Guidelines
We at Gilda's Club want to make it clear that the new mammogram guidelines put forth by the U.S. Preventive Task Force fly in the face of all generally conventional wisdom about the importance of early detection and persistent vigilance as valuable tools in preventing and surviving this disease. Gilda’s Club does not purport to be a medical institution, so we don’t provide medical services or advice. However, we do have years of experience working closely with people who live with breast cancer. And that’s no small thing.
Of particular concern is the Task Force's dismissal of breast self-exams as a diagnostic tool. Everyone knows someone who has found their own breast cancer this way. More importantly, statistics support the value of self-exams in both early detection and breast cancer survival. Self-examination costs nothing – and pays back many-fold. So, why would the Task Force go out of the way to question its effectiveness?
A second recommendation was that women in their 40s stop getting mammograms, based on fewer deaths in that age group. But the panel acknowledged that for every 1,904 women screened between ages 40 and 49, one cancer death is prevented. That still amounts to a fairly large number of women who would not detect their breast cancer at a stage when it’s still highly treatable – and instead be faced with a far less favorable outcome.
At Gilda's Club NNJ, 11 percent of our members living with breast cancer are under 50. Take the example of Cindy Golden. The Paramus resident was diagnosed with Stage 2 triple-positive breast cancer following detection of a sizable tumor through her annual mammogram. Six rounds of chemo and several years of medicinal treatment later, Cindy is in remission with an excellent outlook. How old was she at that key mammogram? Just 49 – well within the standard elevated risk category for breast cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Cindy expressed great frustration that if she’d followed these new guidelines, her outcome would have been much worse. She also expressed anger that the Task Force’s cited concern about “false positive” mammogram results should preclude any woman’s pursuit of diagnostic testing for breast cancer. A false positive – no matter how traumatic – is, as Cindy puts it, a small price to pay for better odds of a good outcome. This is for women like Cindy – productive citizen of North Jersey. Cindy is also a mother. As Gilda’s Club NNJ program director Robin Gilman puts it, mammograms save mommies.
Further, of the 16 Task Force members, only one is directly involved in women’s health, and none of them is an oncologist, a hematologist or a radiologist directly involved in the detection or treatment of cancer. Therefore, Gilda’s Club NNJ will stick with the experts we have relied on for many years, whose backgrounds are known, whose philosophy is early detection and intervention, and whose advice has saved lives. That includes the American Cancer Society, which said in the wake of the new guidelines’ release that it would continue to recommend more frequent screening. The same goes for the North Jersey Affiliate of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, a leader in this region’s fight against breast cancer. A major goal cited by this group for the 2010-11 program year is reversal of the trend in Sussex County of late breast cancer diagnosis, which has led to a higher incidence of death from the disease. Established policymakers, and the ones fighting in the trenches against the scourge of the illness – these are our guides. We’ll follow their guidelines, thank you.
Ruth Dugan
Board President
Gilda’s Club NNJ
More information about Gilda’s Club NNJ is available at www.gildasclubnnj.org or by calling (201) 457-1670.
About Gilda’s Club Northern New Jersey:
Gilda’s Club Northern New Jersey is a cancer-support community serving 12 counties in North Jersey as well as southern Rockland County, and is part of an international network of affiliate clubhouses anchored by Gilda’s Club Worldwide. All services at the Hackensack-based clubhouse, from lectures and workshops to support groups and social events, are open to anyone – men, women, children and teens – who has been touched in any way by cancer, and are completely free of charge. For further information or to make a donation, visit http://www.gildasclubnnj.org or call (201) 457-1670.