Screening tests are not validated or tested: Dr Shalaka Joshi, Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai
Excerpts from an interview with Dr Shalaka Joshi , surgical oncologist at Tata Memorial Hospital, Mumbai
On population-based screening
Our hospital policy and thinking and my grooming as a student has been that screening is not really mandatory in India. Screening could be with three things. Like I do it at home, or I go to a doctor and get him screened or I get a mammography. So we don’t recommend mammography screening. It is the most heated debated in breast cancer management.
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The US went full circle: the point of screening was to save lives, but that was not happening. If you were to do an autopsy of women who died of road accidents you might see that 7-8 per cent will have breast cancer if you look extensively look for it.
But they may not be diagnosed. So similarly if you do a mammography 25 per cent of the tumours detected will have something abnormal, but that would have never manifested in that women’s lifetime. So, all cancers do not kill, all cancers do not grow to become symptomatic.
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On companies offering cancer-screening and detection tests
I am not going to disregard these tests, but all I can say is they need to be tested. As a surgeon for diagnosis examination the gold standard is clinical breast examination, mammo/ultra sound and the third is pathology.
If I feel suspicious of a lump my final detection tool is biopsy. We call these the triangle of breast cancer diagnosis.
On population-based screening
Our hospital policy and thinking and my grooming as a student has been that screening is not really mandatory in India. Screening could be with three things. Like I do it at home, or I go to a doctor and get him screened or I get a mammography. So we don’t recommend mammography screening. It is the most heated debated in breast cancer management.
Also Read: Cancer screening in a small town in Maharashtra beats healthcare startups engaged in such devices
The US went full circle: the point of screening was to save lives, but that was not happening. If you were to do an autopsy of women who died of road accidents you might see that 7-8 per cent will have breast cancer if you look extensively look for it.
But they may not be diagnosed. So similarly if you do a mammography 25 per cent of the tumours detected will have something abnormal, but that would have never manifested in that women’s lifetime. So, all cancers do not kill, all cancers do not grow to become symptomatic.
Also Read: How some 3,200 cancer patients have benefited from the investors in a debt mutual fund
On companies offering cancer-screening and detection tests
I am not going to disregard these tests, but all I can say is they need to be tested. As a surgeon for diagnosis examination the gold standard is clinical breast examination, mammo/ultra sound and the third is pathology.
If I feel suspicious of a lump my final detection tool is biopsy. We call these the triangle of breast cancer diagnosis.
