Breast Cancer Archive

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recently updated their guidelines on screening for depression. This time around, they recommended widespread screening through primary care practices, plus gave special attention to women who are pregnant or recently gave birth. These matter-of-fact, achievable guidelines and goals have the potential to reap enormous health benefits.

There’s almost always something we can do to improve our health and well-being — even at the end of our lives. Palliative care is designed to improve the quality of life for people with life-threatening illnesses and their families by keeping a person comfortable and making sure his or her values and preferences guide the medical team’s actions. For this reason, good communication with your care team — and your loved ones — is essential, even before you or a loved one has developed a serious illness.

Last year, only months after announcing that he had an aggressive form of melanoma, former President Carter declared that he was cancer free — thanks at least in part to a recently approved immunotherapy drug. Immunotherapy is a type of targeted therapy that helps boost the body’s own immune response to cancer. It does so while sparing healthy cells, thus minimizing side effects.

Ask the doctor

Q. In your discussions of breast cancer screening, you never mention ultrasound. Is it an alternative to mammography?

A. No. Although the FDA has approved an automated breast ultrasound system to be used in addition to mammography for asymptomatic women with dense breasts, there are not enough published data about its effectiveness in screening to support its use. Moreover, ultrasound alone is not an alternative to mammography for routine breast cancer screening because ultrasound cannot pick up the small deposits of calcium (microcalcifications) that can be a sign of breast cancer.

Ask the doctor

Q. My daughter had a miscarriage a few months ago and since then she has been depressed and withdrawn. Do you know anything I can do to help?

A. Miscarriage can involve a difficult emotional recovery, and many women and their partners are surprised at the intensity of their feelings. Many women who have experienced a miscarriage feel that they have done something wrong. They may worry that the miscarriage resulted from stress or lifestyle choices they made during pregnancy. In fact, most miscarriages are the result of chromosomal abnormalities, structural abnormalities of the uterus, or maternal endocrine or autoimmune disorders.

Image: Thinkstock

Targeted cancer therapies have limits, but some may offer a better option than standard chemotherapy.

Mention cancer treatment, and most men think of chemotherapy—complete with hair loss and extreme fatigue. But for some men, there is another option. Targeted therapies can sometimes treat certain cancers with fewer side effects and better outcomes.

In the journals

If you have suffered a heart attack and plan to undergo prostate cancer treatment, you may want to weigh the risks and benefits of androgen deprivation therapy (ADT). ADT decreases the amount of androgens in the body, which prostate cancer needs to grow and survive. It is also often used along with radiation therapy, and the combination has been shown to prolong survival in men with unfavorable-risk prostate cancer—defined as cancer with two or more high-risk factors, like a PSA level between 10 and 40 ng/mL, a Gleason score of 7 or higher, or biopsies with 50% or higher cancerous cells.

But a study in The Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that men who had a prior heart attack can increase their risk of a fatal one if they undergo both radiation therapy and ADT. Researchers compared overall survival and death from prostate cancer, fatal heart attack, and other causes in a group of 206 men with unfavorable-risk prostate cancer. The men received either radiation alone, or radiation and six months of ADT. The researchers also categorized the men into subgroups based on other health conditions, including heart disease.

By the mid-20th century, most births took place in the hospital. But increasingly, some women are choosing to have their babies at home in an effort to avoid seemingly unnecessary interventions and find an alternative to hospital environments. We don’t have the best data to assess the safety of home birth. But a recent analysis offers insights that can help women make choices based on what they value the most.

Image: iStock

Flibanserin is the first treatment of its kind. But it comes with a steep price tag and severe health risks.

It's now six months since the FDA approved flibanserin (Addyi), which is the first medication for sexual desire disorders. The drug was hailed as a "female Viagra," but is it living up to the hype? "It's not the solution we were hoping for," says Dr. Hope Ricciotti, editor in chief of Harvard Women's Health Watch and an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School.

For years, there has been concern about the high rate of cesarean births — but just how many cesareans are too many? A recent study suggests that a cesarean rate of 19% is about right. The reasons for high cesarean rates may be related more to each hospital’s circumstances and processes than to other, more commonly cited reasons. If you’re concerned, find out the C-section rate at the hospital where you plan to deliver your baby.