News & Events: DCIS

The NY Times profiled UCSF breast cancer surgeon Dr. Laura Esserman and her challenge to  the conventional wisdom surrounding breast cancer screening. Esserman argues that most patients will not benefit from early detection of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) lesions and further that the ominous word "carcinoma" be dropped from the medical term and the condition renamed "indolent lesions of epithelial origin," or IDLEs. Late one afternoon this summer, Dr. Laura J. Esserman, a breast cancer surgeon at the University of California, San Francisco, sat in a darkened room scrutinizing a [...]

UCSF News reports on the recommendations of an NCI scientific panel chaired by Laura Esserman, MD, MBA, Professor of Surgery and Radiology and Director, UCSF Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center,  to reduce overdiagnosis and overtreatment. To address the growing problem of people being overdiagnosed and overtreated for cancer, a group of scientists convened by the National Cancer Institute and chaired by a UC San Francisco breast cancer expert is proposing a major update of the way the nation approaches diseases now classified as "cancer." The "Viewpoint" article was published online [...]