Breast Cancer Survivors: Making Sense of New Research

New research about breast cancer can be overwhelming unless you know how to spot novel therapies that may apply to you.

Will an aspirin a day lower your risk of breast cancer? Do antiperspirants increase your risk? Is soy good or bad for women who've had breast cancer?

It's hard enough to make sense of all the competing headlines about what you should and shouldn't do to help prevent breast cancer. When you've already had the disease, every new story and research study takes on added significance. How can you tell what's relevant and what's not about new breast cancer research?

"Health care information today is easily shared and distributed widely, so it's harder and harder to sort out what's good and what's not," says Mary McCabe, RN, director of the Cancer Survivorship program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. "You can often get very anxious about a small piece of information that's of very little consequence in your own situation. You need to be very thorough in filtering what information you'll take seriously. By developing filters, you can approach new information more objectively."

Evaluating New Breast Cancer Findings

To construct your own personal "research filter," McCabe suggests that you first ask a few questions:

• What's the source? Check to see that information comes from a reliable source. Good examples are the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, or a major medical school or teaching hospital. If it's a new study, was it reported in a peer-reviewed medical journal, such as The New England Journal of Medicine?
• Is it relevant to me? A study about the benefits of a particular therapy may have been done in women with metastatic disease, for example, while your breast cancer is Stage I. Headlines about new medical discoveries don't always focus on these details.
• Do I understand it? Even the savviest among us can have trouble interpreting medical research. Web sites such as WebMD Health and Breastcancer.org host message boards that can help you understand the latest news. Breastcancer.org also reviews research news every month, with a convenient "conclusion and take-home message" at the end of every study it describes. This helps you understand how the new research might relate to you. Other sources, like the American Cancer Society, can also help you put new research in perspective.
• Do I need more assistance to evaluate it? If you're still not sure what a new study means for you, bring the information to your doctor and ask her what she thinks.

"You want any recommendations on what to do with new medical information to come from your physician," says oncologist Marisa Weiss, MD, founder of Breastcancer.org and the author of Living Beyond Breast Cancer. "So ultimately, you have to bring new studies that interest you to your doctor and ask what to do about it, if the benefits in the study apply to you or if they don't."