Over the weekend, I stopped at a bookstore for coffee and to look through recent magazines (I took “Plane and Pilot,” “American Handgunner,” and February's "Scientific American" (henceforward, SA). Opening SA, I was confronted with an article on Prostate Cancer...how timely!
The SA article focused on the controversies surrounding diagnosis and treatment with, what I'm choosing to cite as, three major themes: The controversy of PSA testing, the controversy of biopsy, and the controversy of existing treatment modalities.
PSA testing we know about...too many false positives resulting in...too many biopsy's which, even when cancer is present, do not provide enough information regarding the nature of the cancer identified resulting in...too many treatment procedures with their accompanying side effects and complications.
All of the above are valid concerns...and I couldn't care less. Once the biopsy confirmed the presence of cancer cells, for me there was no controversy...get this crap out of me!
Certainly our understanding is far from complete and our testing/treatment will be viewed as primitive in the not too distant future; I repeat, I could not care less. My experience, to date, has far exceeded expectations. If I could have been guaranteed that waiting would have no negative consequences, would I have delayed treatment? Perhaps, but no such guarantee exists.
The Scientific American article reports only 4% of prostate cancers will become aggressive and life-threatening. For all the others, there is no downside to delaying treatment. Those are mighty good odds...UNLESS you happen to be in that 4% for whom the number becomes 100%. At that point, I'm sure I would wish I had opted for one of the existing treatments. I'm just sayin'..........................
Bill, you said it in a nutshell. If it's the best we can do right now, then do it, and when we get better tests, THEN use the better tests. Talk to me when you have something that works better for everyone. I'd be dead now without the biopsy, so don't throw out the baby with the bathwater unless someone is there read to catch him.
ReplyDeleteKen Jones