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rianne2580
rianne2580 Member Posts: 191

If a surgeon stood on a street corner and performed a needle biopsy on every 2nd or 3rd healthy woman walking by, they would have some form of DCIS or LCIS? I have a feeling the percentage would be pretty high. Are there any studies where they actually follow cases of DCIS and LCIS? If so, where is it? I want to be part of it. I can take the risk, it doesn't bother me.

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  • Beesie
    Beesie Member Posts: 12,240
    edited November 2010

    If a surgeon stood on a street corner and performed a needle biopsy on every 2nd or 3rd healthy woman walking by, they would have some form of DCIS or LCIS?  NO.

    Autopsy studies have shown that anywhere from <1% to 18% of women may have undetected DCIS at the time of their death.  Only one study (of what I've found so far) had the 18% finding; most of the rest are in the range of 10% - 14% although quite a few were considerably lower. So the average seems to be about 10%.  Keep in mind that although the DCIS was undetected, this doesn't mean that at some point, had these women not died of other causes, the cancer might have been detected and/or become invasive.  An autopsy provides single point in time data so it's helpful in determining the prevalence of DCIS but not much more.

    Pathology of the breast - Google Books Result

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/bookshelf/br.fcgi?book=erta185&part=ch3

    As for studies that follow DCIS (I can't comment on LCIS), there aren't many because when DCIS is detected, it's removed.  There have been studies done on situations where a biopsy is misread - i.e. DCIS is not diagnosed when in fact it is present - in these cases, approx. 25% become invasive cancer (I'm not sure of the time frame; I think within 5 - 10 years).  However it's important to consider that if DCIS is missed in a biopsy, it means that there likely was only a very small amount of DCIS and it probably was low grade, without necrosis.  So these findings don't say anything about what would happen if high grade DCIS was not removed.

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