Study: Do Breast Tumors Go Away On Their Own?

Seattle – Researchers are asking the question do breast tumors go away on their own in the hopes of starting a debate. They say that there are some cancers that do go away on their own like neuroblastoma, a childhood tumor, so it may be possible for breast tumors to just disappear too.

The authors do agree that it isn’t right to leave breast cancer untreated but they also believe it’s possible for breast tumors to grow smaller or disappear on their own. The study to see if this is possible was done on American and Norwegian citizens who had breast cancer. The researchers compared the two of women who had their mammograms every two years to those who only had one in six years.

The findings suggested that women who got their mammograms every two years compared to those who only had the one in six years found breast cancer 22 percent more often. The researchers say that this can mean that the mammograms found cancer that went away on its own. However the American Cancer Society say that it is best for women to get their annual mammograms after age 40 to help detect breast cancer earlier then they otherwise might. Experts tend to disagree with the researchers of this study because they say that the mammogram has been proven to save women’s lives by detecting the cancer as soon as possible.

“Our findings simply provide new insight on what is arguably the major harm associated with mammographic screening, namely, the detection and treatment of cancers that would otherwise regress,” said the researchers led by Per-Henrik Zahl at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health‘s epidemiology department in Oslo.

Robert Smith, a member of the Cancer Society, says that a doctor can compare mammograms of a patient to see if the previous mammograms missed any small tumors. He says there are a lot of reasons why women are found to have breast cancer who have the mammogram done more often.

Due to the fact that each year in America there are 180,000 new cases of breast cancer, doctors would have begun to notice if these tumors were going away on their own says Mr. Smith. He says that the findings are inaccurate because cancer that may not be found in one mammogram can be detected in another.

“The issue is the unintended consequences that can come with our screening,” said Dr. Suzanne W. Fletcher, an emerita professor of ambulatory care and prevention at Harvard Medical School. “In general we tend to underplay them.”

Other researchers are thinking of ways to reproduce this study and see what their findings may be. The possibility of doing the study again in Mexico is being considered because the mammogram is new there.

Some women, after these findings, may decide to wait and see if the tumors detected in their breasts grow or not. Although some may believe this to be a dangerous decision others see the results of this study promising.

The study is published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.