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Breast surgery accelerates recurrences in some women.

Article Excerpt
Researchers call it the mammography paradox, because mammograms are supposed to save lives. But most of the major clinical trials show slightly more breast cancer deaths in women who underwent mammography screening, compared with women who did not. This increase, however, was shown only in the women who started having mammograms in their forties and not in those who started at an older age. The slightly higher incidence of deaths occurred among the younger women within three years of diagnosis.

No one seemed all that interested in pursuing an explanation for the mammography paradox. The notable exception is a team of researchers led by Michael Retsky, PhD, lecturer in surgery at Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. They hypothesize that surgery accelerates the growth of breast cancer in some premenopausal women. That could also explain another well-documented observation: a sharp increase in the number of younger women who suffer a relapse (recurrence of breast cancer), eight to ten months after surgery. Animal studies support the contention that surgery can speed the growth of cancer.

Angiogenesis

In their paper published recently in the quarterly International Journal of Surgery, Retsky and colleagues make a case for surgery...