Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Is Surgery For Prostate Cancer Necessary? It Depends On How Advanced It Is, Study Finds
A three-decade study found that prostate-removal surgery added an average of nearly three years to lives of men with prostate cancer, compared with those who didn’t get surgery and were monitored. The results suggest the benefits of surgery in men with advanced prostate cancer. Yet men in the early stages of the slow-moving but life-threatening disease might want to wait before undergoing the procedure or forgo it entirely, the study’s authors and other experts say. (Loftus, 12/12)
Nearly 30 years after it began, a study of prostate cancer patients shows both that the disease will not cause harm to the majority of men who have it, and that aggressive treatment is warranted for men with an intermediate risk of spread. The nuanced results come from a new update to a landmark study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, that has followed 695 Swedish men since they were diagnosed with localized prostate cancer between October 1989 and February 1999. (Weintraub, 12/12)
Excess body weight was responsible for 3.9% of cancer globally, or 544,300 cases, in 2012, according to a new report. The report, published Wednesday in the journal CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, also highlights a relationship between obesity and the risk of 13 cancers, including postmenopausal breast cancer and liver cancer, and a probable relationship with three others, including prostate cancer. (Thomas, 12/12)
Nearly 5,000 women in Missouri were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2015, the last year for which figures are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s about 130 cases per 100,000 women, making breast cancer the leading type of cancer for Missouri women by far – nearly two-and-a-half times the diagnosis rate for lung cancer. The incidence of breast cancer in Kansas isn’t much lower – about 124 cases per 100,000 women. (Margolies, 12/12)
Is doing major surgery through small incisions better for the patient than more traumatic traditional methods? The answer is surprisingly complicated. While minimally invasive technology generally reduces pain and recovery time, comparative complication rates aren’t clear without high-quality clinical trials. (McCullough, 12/12)
