From USA TODAY:
For more than a century, doctors have routinely removed lymph nodes from the armpits of breast cancer patients for the most logical of reasons. The nodes are the likeliest pathway for cancer cells to reach the rest of the body, killing the patient. Better to remove the cancer in the breast, sever the exit route and accept the side effects, which include painful swelling and, in rare cases, disabling loss of arm mobility.
Or so most everyone thought until last week, when a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association turned the conventional wisdom inside out. The study found the lymph-node procedure unnecessary for many patients whose cancer is diagnosed early. Radiation and anti-cancer drugs, which women typically get after surgery anyway, are just as effective.
While the findings won’t affect every breast cancer patient, they could change treatment for anywhere from 15,000 to 40,000 women each year. But the history of breast cancer says that will not happen quickly, and the reasons provide a cautionary tale. The hard fact is that advances in the understanding and treatment of cancer spread slowly and unevenly, with predictably grim results…
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