Breast cancer follow-up
Friday, 18 Jan 2008 11:28
Long-term follow-up checks after breast cancer 'should be introduced'
Breast cancer patients need to be checked for new cancers for longer than the recommended time, leading medics have argued.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) advises that follow-up treatment to detect and treat recurrences and provide psychological support should be carried out for two to three years.
It says routine long-term follow-up is ineffective and unwarranted.
But Dr Michael Dixon, clinical director at Edinburgh's Breakthrough research unit and Dr David Montgomery, clinical research fellow at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, say clinical examination should be annual for two years and surveillance by mammography thereafter.
"Patients' needs vary, so follow-up programmes for patients with breast cancer need to be evidence based, flexible, and tailored to their lifelong needs," they said in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).
The medics added that longer-term follow-up is especially needed considering that survival continues to improve; so new cancers are now more common in many patients than recurrent cancer because the treatments of the first cancer are so effective.
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