Reclassifying some conditions as “not cancer” could help conversations with patients Hero Images/Getty
鈥淵ou have cancer鈥 is awful to say, worse still to hear 鈥 a gut-wrenching first step along a desperately uncertain journey. The subsequent conversation invariably revolves around a plethora of averages, and test results that, while increasingly sophisticated, are far from perfect.
But should everything we currently call 鈥渃ancer鈥 have that title? In this week鈥檚 BMJ, Laura Esserman argues that breast lumps known as ductal carcinomas in situ (DCIS), which almost never spread and are rarely lethal, should no longer be called cancer. Instead, she proposes…
