Chemotherapy Is Not For Every Patient
Channel: BioBalance Healthcast
Date: 12/03/2018

Read more at www.biobalancehealth.com


One of the most controversial topics in medicine today is "Should every woman who develops breast cancer be treated with chemotherapy?".  Even more important, should chemotherapy be used as much as it is for most cancers?   Specifically, because I have dealt with breast cancer more than any other cancer I want to use this as my example.  OBGYNs are the doctors who find breast cancers most frequently when they are doing yearly breast exams and when they order yearly mammograms.  As a gynecologist, I would break the news to my patient, then refer her to a breast surgeon who would manage the rest of her care, including surgery and often times, chemotherapy.   

When I first started practice in the 80s, these surgeons believed of course, in surgery and it was generally severe and traumatic to the patient.  Over time, surgery for breast cancer has become less radical.  In the past, most patients with breast cancer received radiation or chemotherapy and rarely were allowed to avoid either.  Slowly this has become less of a requirement for patients with breast cancer, however most women I talk to are convinced to take chemotherapy, "just to be careful to kill the breast cancer cell that were too small to remove with surgery.".  Because of the increase in early detection, surgeons get patients with early smaller cancers and patients can often have the same survival with or without chemotherapy, however my patients are still talked into chemo by their surgeons because "It is just to be careful".  Today we are talking about the risk of "being careful "and why this line of reasoning is no longer reliable as well as not always good for you!  


Many oncologists are avoiding chemotherapy for early-stage breast tumors. The average number of newly diagnosed women with breast cancer has dropped from 35% down to 21%, and more are treatable with surgery.