Breast Cancer Awareness: A chance for a new conversation

Breast Cancer Awareness Month is an opportunity to start a new cancer conversation.  This is a month that celebrates survival and the role of research and care.  But we are missing an important piece of the puzzle — the patient’s’ role in early detection.   

The costs of underestimating the role of the patient are staggering by any measure.  According to the National Cancer Institute, the annual cost of cancer care is $157 billion in 2010 dollars.  Every 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women will be diagnosed with cancer during their lifetime.

{mosads}In terms of cost and outcomes, early detection is the most effective treatment for cancer.  In nearly all circumstances, the stage at cancer diagnosis determines the type and length of treatment required and the chances of survival.  

Conversations around the early detection of breast cancer have focused mainly on the importance of women performing self-exams. It needs to be a broader conversation about being aware of what is normal for your body.

The most common cancer symptom, a subtle and persistent change to your normal health, is often ignored, accepted as a new normal or associated with aging, diet or lifestyle.

A patient’s’ ability to recognize subtle health changes that persist for two weeks or more and bring them to a doctor’s attention leads to early detection. Researchers agree that individuals across all demographics — age, race, gender, and ethnicity — do not present health symptoms, especially those suggestive of cancer, in a timely manner. This is referred to as the time-to-presentation problem.

Time-to-presentation is a largely ignored health care problem that is quietly and substantially magnifying cancer’s devastating effects. When the time to presentation is delayed, doctors prescribe more intensive and aggressive treatment that is more difficult for patients to tolerate and often leave lasting side effects. It often includes extended treatment and is more likely to be hospital-administered. This results in stratospheric increases in treatment costs that are then passed onto the rest of the insured population.  

15-40 Connection, a Massachusetts based nonprofit, was founded to empower individuals with the lifesaving advantage of early cancer diagnosis. It poses to audiences a simple yet powerful question: would you recognize a cancer symptom?

Would you be concerned about subtle health changes that persists for 2-weeks or more and bring it to the attention of a medical professional? If for example you felt extremely tired for two weeks or more and had begun to change your lifestyle habits as a result, would you drink more caffeinated beverages or would you call your doctor to determine the cause?  When people learn that a subtle health change that persists is cancer’s most common warning sign, they understand the harm that can come from a lack of awareness and patient action.

Today, the person who is often able to notice the earliest warning signs of cancer and other disease and thereby benefit from most effective treatment available early detection — is the patient. Patients have information about their health that is critically important to the process that leads to diagnosis. Yet, most do not know it.

Have we as a society skipped the first step to reducing cancer deaths? Have we ignored the contribution patients can bring to improving health care and reducing costs? To detect cancer as well as other diseases earlier, health care needs to be a collaboration between medical professionals and patients.  Patients are critical ingredients to successful health care collaborations. Empowered patients are good for health care.  They are a largely untapped and underdeveloped resource.

We know that even as you read this, there are people experiencing health changes right now that are early warning signs of cancer but they don’t know it.  They have not been taught to hear them. They are not seeking medical care and their cancer is progressing unchecked to stages that will be more difficult to treat and less likely to be cured.

During Breast Cancer Awareness Month this year, let’s take a step back and look for solutions.  Let’s educate women to recognize new lumps as well as other important health changes early and effectively articulate those symptoms to their physician.  15-40 Connection and its growing roster of cancer survivors it is working with have a message that can empower all people to be the best advocates for themselves, using their knowledge of their own health to accelerate diagnosis, improve outcomes, and reduce costs.

The power is truly with the patient.

Tricia Scannell Laursen is executive director of 15-40 Connection, a national nonprofit organization founded to improve cancer survival rates through the power of early detection.  For more information, please visit www.15-40.org.