Decades of Data Fail to Resolve Debate on Treating Tiny Breast Lesions

The New York Times - Gilbert Welch, professor of medicine, comments on a recent study, which showed that diagnoses of ductal carcinoma in situ (D.C.I.S.) were treated aggressively with mastectomies or lumpectomies over the course of twenty years, despite the fact that the death rate from breast cancer of these patients, regardless of their choice of treatment, was very low. "I think it is a classic example of what is and will only increasingly become a recurrent problem in medicine,” Welch states. "The questions about what to do — if anything — are fundamentally difficult."