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Endocrine disease
What Is an "Endocrine" Disease?
My visit with the endocrinologist today was much more limited than I had anticipated. I genuinely believe that breast cancer is an endocrine disease and that one of the "missing pieces" for us all is the lack of any significant direct role by endocrinologists in our treatment planning. I gather that endocrinologists as a rule limit their practice in terms of breast cancer patients to hormonal manipulation to deal with such problems as menopausal symptoms, and even then generally applying that primarily just with those patients who are hormone receptor negative.
It may or may not be asking a lot of endocrinologists, but I feel strongly that it is only logical to ask (and even insist) that they take a more active role in dealing with breast cancer treatment. It was explained to me that the breast is not an organ like the pancreas, and breast cancer is not considered to be caused by estrogen because if it was, all women would develop breast cancer. I did not find that argument very persuasive. While it may be that endocrinologists traditionally have only dealt with organs like the pancreas, if there was more willingness to "think outside the box" the application of their knowledge about the endocrine process could provide keys that are not so obvious to those in other specialties who are trying to figure out the puzzle of breast cancer.
It makes little sense to me to be putting so many women on medications for hormonal manipulation like SERMS (tamoxifen, raloxifene) or AI's (Aromasin, Femara, Arimidex) if endocrinologists have such limited participation in breast cancer treatment in general.
Am I missing something here? This seems so obvious to me that it is just basic science....
AlaskaAngel
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