Steph <
[email protected]> wrote:
> "Tony Lima" <
[email protected]> wrote in message
>
news:[email protected]...
> > On Sun, 21 Mar 2004 05:29:43 GMT, "Steph"
> > <
[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > >I'm glad you think that. But there isn't too much
> > >evidence that it's true, unfortunately
> >
> > Steph, I think you should review your statistical
> > methodology texts. Any of them will discuss the fallacy
> > of projecting from population data to individual
> > experience. In our case detecting the mets earlier
> > helped. It might not for others. But we can say the same
> > thing for virtually every treatment that deals with any
> > aspect of this disease.
> >
> > My wife actually likes Taxol. Most people don't feel
> > that way. They like Gemzar. My wife had a very bad
> > reaction to
> > it. Population averages don't nearly tell the whole
> > story.
> > - Tony
>
> The point I was trying to make is that finding metastatic
> disease early, even at an asymptomatic stage, makes no
> difference to survival for most common cancers. Find mets
> early, and start treatment: some patients will live longer
> than the median, some shorter, but there is no way you can
> know if this is anything to do with treatment. Some
> patients will die from the side-effects of treatment, in
> fact, so they certainly don't benefit.
>
> I see and hear people clamouring for PET scans and other
> expensive tests all the time, because there is a deep-
> seated belief in most of us that fining recurrent or
> metastatic disease "early" confers some benefit.
> Generally, it doesn't.
This is a case in point, the PET scan caught the liver mets
and missed the brain mets. Prognosis goes downhill when all
sit back and feel safe because of high-tech diagnostics..
--
madiba