Interesting study on keeping DCIS from becoming invasive

LAstar

These researchers are using chloroquine (malaria drug) to change the pH of a cell component to starve the DCIS cells.  Very interesting!

 

http://www.cancernetwork.com/breast-cancer/content/article/10165/2062554 

SusieR12

After being diagnosed with DCIS I began to research it a lot...My husband did extensive research...I also found out that I had calcifications a whole year before I was told I had cancer but no one disucussed what calcifications were to me and what that meant...I was clueless...I truly think my cancer could have been prevented...I personally feel that calciifications are possibly a pre cancerous cell and therefore, should not stay in the breast...They can be removed one at a time during a biopsy...Not sure why doctors don't educate women on the different types of breast cancer...I thought this whole time that there was only one kind...My Oncologist says my mammogram saved my life since micro calcification clusters cannot be felt by a monthly exam or even a surgeon...And now they recommend waiting every 2 years for a mammogram...A man somewhere who doesn't have a clue about breast cancer must have made up that stupid ruling...Sorry I am still a bit angry, sad, emotional, in pain, want my life back, etc...Thanks for taking the time to read my post...SMILE AT EVERYONE BECAUSE WE NEVER KNOW WHAT THEY ARE GOING THROUGH...

LAstar

That's interesting.  I'd read that calcifications can be present and not an indicator of cancer, but clusters of calcifications were more suspicious.  I suppose that any calcification could be an indicator of a cancer and could be the beginning of a cluster.  As someone else who is glad I finally got my mammogram, I also don't understand the every-2-years recommendation.  

I'm so sorry that you are in pain!  I'm about to be there too -- anxious!  I think it's okay to be angry, sad, and all the other things.  They are normal stages of grief and loss.  My husband is wonderful in giving me complete license to feel what I am feeling and let it out.  There have to be moments of thankfulness to balance it all out -- thankful that it wasn't found too late, thankful that we live in an age when we have medical technology, thankful to just be here at all.  Sorry if I am sounding very pre-BMX and and naive, but we have a rare sunny day here in western Oregon and it is helping my mood today.  Now you stop doing dishes and pamper yourself so you can have a great summer!  

Beesie

About 50% of women get calcifications. There are lots of things that can cause calcs, including something as simple as a bump to the breast. Well over 95% of calcs are benign and harmless.  Larger calcs, macrocalcifcations, are always harmless.  Smaller calcs, microcalcifications, usually are harmless but these can be a warning sign that there is cancer present.  The calcifications themselves are calcium deposits - they are not cancer and they are not a pre-cancer.  Calcs can develop as a sort of side effect of cancer (particularly DCIS) or a pre-cancerous condition such as ADH  - that's why the presence of calcs on a mammogram might signal that there is cancer in the breast - but the calcs themselves aren't cancer and don't become cancer.

With microcalcs, it's the pattern of the calcs that counts. A random scattering of calcs would not be considered suspicious.  Suspicious calcs are those that appear to be clustered together or those that are in a linear formation. In other words, calcs are suspicious when they appear in a formation that is consistent with the way cancer forms.  Suspicious calcs usually warrant a biopsy but even then 80% of suspicious microcalcs turn out to be benign.  

Because calcs are so common, if someone has only one or two microcalcs, or scattered microcalcs that do not appear to be clustered or in a linear formation, usually a biopsy won't be done because the likelihood that these calcs represent breast cancer is so small (less than 2%). If biopsies were done on every woman who showed up with calcs there would be hundreds of thousands of unnecessary biopsies.  But instead, if new microcalcs show up on a mammo, usually a 6 month follow-up mammo will be scheduled.  The reason is to see if more calcs develop during that time and if so, whether the pattern has started to appear more suspicious, thereby warranting a biopsy. Calcs that represent breast cancer are likely to continue to show up, in greater and greater numbers and in a more and more concerning pattern.  Benign calcs are likely to be stable.  That's why a 6 month check following the discovery of non-suspicious microcalcs is so important. 

Susie, when your calcs were initially found, were you scheduled for a 6 month follow-up mammo or did they just keep you on your annual schedule?  That would seem to me to be the error in how your case was handled.  

SusieR12

Thanks for that info BEESIE...The answer to your question is NO...No one informed me that I had calcifications and needed to have a mammogram every 6 months...Is that the correct protocol if you have lots of calcifications??? If so, I sure wish someone would have done their job so I wouldn't have had to go through this horrible experience of sadness and mostly pain...

beacon800

Ever since my first mammo calcifications were detected. They were the benign looking type and quite harmless. Then, after five years of annual mammos there was a new group of calcifications. I saw the film, they were much different looking than the other calcifications, smaller, linear, more numerous. Even I could see that something was going on there. Biopsy proved LCIS.



These calcifications were nowhere near the other ones.