Todd Hartley: Hi, it's Todd Hartley for Breast Cancer Answers and I am here with Dr. Laszlo
Tabar, the news all over the place has been about early detection and maybe it's not so
important they are saying about screening mammograms happening so frequently.
So, I wanted to sit down with Dr. Tabar and wanted to ask him about new treatments in
the advancement of treating breast cancer and does that render early detection with
screening mammography less important.
Laszlo Tabar: Well, the answer is clearly no.
What is very good news for all women with beast cancer is that we are attacking this
ugly disease from many fronts, early detection, treatment in early phases, and we have to
give credit to the treatment regimens that have improved so much during the past years,
but none of them replaced the other.
Can you imagine if I find a small cancer and it's not going to be treated?
Can you imagine you find an apple-sized cancer?
It's not going to be cured.
So, if you look at the slides these are survival curves of thousands of thousands of women,
the upper curve is survival of women whose breast cancer was still localized to the breast
and these are all kind of breast cancers clinically detected and so on and the lower curve is
when the breast cancer was spread.
Now, look at this slide, which is the survival curve, there are more than two thousand women
with screened-detected cancers.
The upper curve showing the outcome of women with screen-detected breast cancer where the
cancer was still localized to the breast, women did know about it.
It was not palpable.
The lower is screen detected, but is already spread.
Now, this is the final curve, which really puts the two together; that is the clear message
that women with screen-detected breast cancer already spread into the axilla have a better
outcome than women with clinically-detected breast cancer that did not spread yet.
So, the message is very clear; let us combine early detection with more than treatment.
We should not try to play out one against the other.
Todd Hartley: The patients actually have to be very smart when they hear what's happening
in the news because that information like the Canadian study can be very misleading.
Laszlo Tabar: I am sure that the women are so smart.
They know that when we find the cancer before she finds it.
When we find the cancer before it spread to other organ, the treatment is more successful,
don't listen to these misleading trials especially the data coming from Canada, please don't.
Todd Hartley: We just heard it from the man in mammography.
His name is Dr. Laszlo Tabar, lots of videos coming your way right here on Breast Cancer
Answers on this very important topic.