Should We Rename DCIS?

Ductal carcinoma in situ was all over the news this week, after the Journal of the American Medical Association published “Overdiagnosis and Overtreatment in Cancer, An Opportunity for Improvement.” This is a good, and necessary, conversation. DCIS was front and center as one of the prime candidates for overtreatment, and the panel proposed renaming it Indolent Lesions of Epithelial Origin (or its evocative acronym, IDLE), to lessen fear and potential overtreatment. I can speak with some authority on the subject, as I was diagnosed and treated for DCIS five years ago. After considerable discussion and two attempts at breast-conserving surgery that failed to get the desired clean margins, the treatment plan my doctors and I landed on was a (single) mastectomy with auxiliary lymph node removal to make sure some cells hadn’t escaped. Luckily, they had not, although the mastectomy uncovered still more cells lurking beyond what the earlier surgeries captured. I won’t repeat what others have said, but here’s my take on it. You can call it whatever you want. Call it DCIS or precancer. Call it indolent or IDLE. Call it a cab, for all I care. But if I were diagnosed today, with the same circumstances, I’m willing to bet my doctors would make the same recommendation and I would make the same choice. My oncologist told me the odds of my DCIS becoming invasive were 50/50, and I didn’t like those odds. He also told me he would support me if I chose radiation instead. “Wait and see” was not an option then, and I don’t think it would be now given my specific situation. The other point I want to make is related to that. My book, From Zero to Mastectomy, was reviewed last week on the Breast Cancer Consortium website. While I appreciate the thoughtful treatment Bonnie Spanier gave it and her overall positive review, I want to respond to one area. She said my trajectory took me farther away from the full spectrum of the disease as a precancer, and while she conceded that was understandable at the time, she didn’t feel I gave enough attention to the complexities of DCIS. The book was not an academic exercise for me. I did not set out to write The Emperor of All Pre-Cancers. I felt, then and now, that the best way I could help other women was by sharing my experience. Here are some links to recent and not-so-recent stories about DCIS. If you read only one thing regarding the current debate, read “What’s In A Name?” posted on the #BCSM Community website. This piece, by Jody Schoger and Drs. Deanna Attai and Michael Cowher, is the best summary of the issue I’ve read. Bloomberg News ran a well-balanced story on handling this confusing diagnosis, and I was one of the women interviewed. CURE Today magazine ran the piece “Redefining the Word Cancer,” in which Debu Tripathy wisely said, “one cannot just declare a new system into existence.”  (Especially a belief system: See: Mammograms, Annual.) The same point was raised in the New York Times “Well” blog, in its excellent “Scientists Seek to Rein in Diagnoses of Cancer.” My favorite part of this piece was when Memorial Sloan-Kettering’s Dr. Larry Norton said changing the terminology does not solve the problem of doctors not being able to tell patients which cancers will remain indolent and which will go on to kill them. The best path we have remains the one we’ve always had: individual consultations between doctor and patient, based on individual physical characteristics and risk factors. I would also add levels of risk tolerance. I discussed it a bit in my Bloomberg News interview, and I’ve also written about women who opt for bilateral mastectomies after being diagnosed with DCIS. As the discussion about this poorly understood condition heats up again and the public opinion pendulum swings in favor of watching and waiting, let’s not stand in judgment of their choice.
 

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