Clinicians Should Consider Patient Concerns Amid Rise in Early-Onset Cancers

Although breast cancer has been historically recognized as a disease associated with aging, it is crucial to encourage younger populations of patients to stay vigilant of potential symptoms due to earl-onset incidence increasing over time, Monique Gary, DO, MSc, FACS, said during a conversation with CancerNetwork^®.

In an interview concerning the findings from a study published in JAMA Network Open that highlighted a rise in early-onset breast cancer from 2010 to 2019, Gary, a breast surgeon and medical director at Grand View Health, emphasized the importance of listening to patient concerns and taking them seriously, as it could be a matter of life or death.

Transcript:

We should pay attention to the patient, and not just the patterns. Too often, young people are dismissed because they don’t fit the typical mold of what cancer looks like. We have historically been taught that cancer is largely a disease of aging. And while there are juvenile and pediatric cancers, historically, breast cancer hasn’t been one of them, [as well as] uterine cancer and colon cancer. Because we’re seeing younger and younger people develop these cancers, it means that we need to pay attention to those symptoms, [and] it means that we need to teach young people to pay attention to their bodies and not just power through without understanding the changes because they’re too young for screening. It’s not like you just have to wait for a colonoscopy. By the time you wait for that colonoscopy, you may have advanced disease or you could be dead.

You have to learn to listen to your body. We have to teach that we have to learn to listen to and believe our patients. Those are really great takeaways from this.

Reference

Koh B, Hao Tan DJ, Ng HN, et al. Patterns in cancer incidence among people younger than 50 years in the US, 2010 to 2019. JAMA Netw Open. 2023;6(8):e2328171. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.28171