‘I’m cancer-free thanks to early detection’

Sandra Lee Photo: FilmMagic

Far from a gold standard, the new American Cancer Society guidelines for breast-cancer care are a cold standard for women.

Last week, the ACS ended its decades-long advisory for women to receive annual mammograms, beginning at age 40. The age is now pushed back to 45, with the recommendation for women over 55 — those with the highest death rates from breast cancer — to only have screenings every other year.

More than 40,000 women in America will die of breast cancer this year, according to the ACS. Which makes its new, relaxed screening guidelines all the more perplexing — and dangerous.

I’m concerned by this seismic shift in women’s health because I’m one of the ACS’s estimated 294,130 women who received a breast cancer diagnosis this year.

And I’m most worried for the women who’ll be hurt most by this: young women, poor women, women of color, women with limited education and women whose access to health care and the means to pay for it are terribly restricted. The American Cancer Society also reported that women from poor areas have the highest rates of death from breast cancer.

Breast cancer remains a leading cause of death in women under 40, taking 12,000 such lives a year. It has an especially savage impact on minority women, particularly in African-American women whose cancer rates at age 35 are double those of white women, with triple the mortality rate.

Only lung cancer kills more African-American and white women than breast cancer. And for Hispanic women, breast cancer is the No. 1 killer.

You may write off my alarm in the assumption that my double mastectomy gives me a warped view of the threat of breast cancer. But the simple fact remains: Screening, wheth­er high-definition ultrasound or mammogram, saves lives.

Each and every doctor I met with, at the most respected hospitals and cancer treatment centers in New York, said that women being diagnosed in their 20s and 30s is no longer an anomaly, but an epidemic. This was also overwhelmingly clear when women flooded my Facebook and other social-media platforms with stories of early detection that saved their lives, years — even decades — before age 45.

So, how, in good conscience, can anyone be expected to look at a daughter, a niece, a sister or a friend and tell them to take their chances until they are 45? Not me — not my family. These new guidelines will almost surely cost some women their lives.

Poring over the rationale to push back testing five years and cut mammograms in half, I’m reminded of economics classes in college filled with marginal efficiency of capital and marginal productivity of labor theories. But this isn’t theoretical economics. This is the survival of women — women who shouldn’t be penalized because they don’t have the premium health care, or they live in rural areas without state-of-the-art testing facilities or high-definition ultrasound detectors.

How can we seemingly write these women off? The American Cancer Society has also reported that women from poor areas have the highest rates of death from breast cancer. Do we write them off too? Who else?

And the myth prevails for women of all ages, races and socio-economic backgrounds that if breast cancer doesn’t hang on your family tree, chances are you don’t need to worry, either. But the American Cancer Society reported just eight weeks ago that 85 percent of breast cancers occur in women like me, with no family history. Why those diagnoses are growing without a hereditary component, no one can answer.

But here’s what I do know: I’m cancer-free — thanks to early detection in a routine annual mammogram, at age 48. Breast-cancer death rates in women have been on the decline since 1989, and the biggest decrease has been in women under 50 — a testament to treatment advances and early detection.

It’s tremendous progress, but it’s not enough — though you wouldn’t know that from listening to the American Cancer Society.

We may never be able to eliminate breast cancer. But we must make every effort to protect women by giving them the information and the medical resources they need for early detection.

Sandra Lee is a philanthropist, author, TV personality and editor-in-chief of Sandra Lee Magazine and sandralee.com.
source from : http://nypost.com/2015/11/01/im-cancer-free-because-of-early-detection/