Is Wegovy Shrinking Bariatric Surgery, Too?
(MedPage Today) — Glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists like semaglutide (Ozempic, Wegovy) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro, Zepbound), were originally approved for type 2 diabetes before their obesity indications. But the evidence that they…
Coffee and Heart, Metabolic Risks; What Drives Doctors Away; Ozempic for $100?
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Habitual moderate coffee consumption — 200-300 mg of caffeine/day — was tied to a lower risk of cardiometabolic multimorbidity, a U.K. Biobank analysis found…
Contralateral Breast Cancer Remains a Complex Biological Conundrum
Although contralateral breast cancer (CBC) is the most frequent second malignant tumor among women who have experienced a diagnosis of primary breast cancer, it is less frequent, and less ominous than recurrence of the initial cancer. Nevertheless, for many patients with newly diagnosed unilateral breast cancer, it can be a prominent source of worry as they navigate their treatment decisions. This worry is accentuated among young patients and those with early-stage disease. The most effective preventive solution for CBC is contralateral mastectomy, which was rarely used in the 20th century but has been increasingly used during the past 20 years, first in the US, and now in other countries with comparable resources. For women with a unilateral breast cancer, the consideration of contralateral mastectomy has many drivers, some undoubtedly patient-related, but others stemming from misconceptions among the medical community regarding the risks and benefits of contralateral mastectomy. To date, studies addressing the question of survival following contralateral phylactic mastectomy (CPM) have failed to provide evidence for improved survival. Although lack of survival benefit may seem counter-intuitive, a tenable explanation is that the dominant hazard to survival derives from the index primary tumor rather than the CBC. Because patients with breast cancer are diagnosed with the index primary tumor at a younger age (which increases the hazard of death) and are treated with older, less effective regimens, it is possible that the risk of death from CBC is subsumed by the risk from the index cancer, particularly if second cancers are diagnosed at earlier stages in survivors who tend to be more adherent to posttreatment screening. Consequently, surgical measures to prevent a second primary tumor do not extend survival.
Bilateral Mastectomy and Breast Cancer Mortality
This cohort study estimates the 20-year cumulative risk of breast cancer mortality among women with stage 0 to III unilateral breast cancer according to the type of initial surgery performed.
Annual breast cancer screenings linked to lower risk of death, study finds
Women who were screened for breast cancer on a yearly basis were shown to have a 17% lower risk of death compared to those who received screenings every two years, according to a new study.