Doctor Esserm Article Analysis

The article written in the New York Times, entitled “A Breast Cancer Surgeon Who Keeps Challenging the Status Quo”, focuses on Doctor Esserman approach to breast cancer screening and treatment. Doctor Esserman argues that breast cancer screening has resulted in over diagnosis and treatment for individuals with positive result (Hefner, 2015). According to the article, Dr. Esserman is an avid supporter of the active surveillance for patients with ductal carcinoma in situ or D. C. I. S. instead of biopsies, lumpectomy, or mastectomy. These surgical procedures can result in disfiguring as well as potential harmful side effects. According to Dr. Esserman, more specific screening approach must be developed to reduce the number of false positive because the most lethal form of breast cancer appear between screenings. It is also noted that there is conflict between the recommendation from the American Cancer Society and the United States Preventive Services Task Force. This news article noted that a 20 years studies were conducted that demonstrated that the outcome for patient with D. C. I. S. was same regardless of whether aggressive treatment or active surveillance was used. Ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), also known as stage 0 breast cancer, accounts for approximately 20% of …show more content…
Then, they examined the baseline characteristics of the women by using descriptive statistics and calculated cumulative incidence. Also, they calculated standardized mortality ratio to compare the risk of death from breast cancers among the women diagnosed with DCIS with the US population. In addition, the researchers performed a Cox proportional hazards regression analysis to examine influences of year of diagnosis, age at diagnosis, ethnicity, and grade on the hazard ratio (HR) of death among the women, and treatment on the HR for death in the