I was reading the other day that many cancers have been declassified and will no longer recieve treatment. These wre primarily areas of dense tissue or thickening tissue that would show up on MRI’s. My girlfriend has to see the oncologist next week for a possible cancer diagnosis of the left lung. It was described as thickening or dense tissue area about 12 mm. This was present 4 years ago but has shown some change since then. Would I be out of place questioning the oncologist about this new policy??
I think you may be confusing “cancer declassification” with “radiographic abnormalities that are no longer deemed suspicious enough to biopsy”.
An example of the former is what was known as encapsulated follicular variant of papillary thyroid carcinoma, which was recently downgraded to an atypical follicular lesion (not cancer), since it hasn’t been known to metastasize and thus is better regarded as a non-malignant tumor.
I am not a radiologist, but it’s correct that more sensitive imaging techniques frequently turn up abnormalities that cause concern and are biopsied, when they actually represent benign processes such as infection. Even PET scans (which measure metabolic activity (more pronounced in malignancies) have numerous false positives.
A discussion with the oncologist/radiologist about risk factors and what needs to be followed up with an invasive procedure (as opposed to observation) is a good idea.