SURGERY FOR CANCER

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28447, 29 November 1957, Page 7

SURGERY FOR CANCER

Advice By U.S. Expert

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, Nov. 26. It was “not cricket” for a doct?r not to tell a patient he or had a cancer, an American authority on the disease told a public audience of nearly 400 in Auckland tonight. “The patient must be told,” he said. The speaker, Dr. Owen Wangensteen, professor of surgery at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, in a provocative address, said. “It ts no crime to have a cancer. People want to be told. It is best for doctors to be truthful. This is a very important item in the problem of cancer management.”

Cancer was essentially a problem of old age, Dr. Wangensteen said. It was a powerful enemy, but it was “not” a way of life. “Cancer is curable,” he said, “and surgery—often aggressive surgery—is still the mainstay. But the disease must be recognised at its earliest stage: and this problem if diagnosis in the incipient stage, I hope will be solved before long.” Dr. Wangensteen urged ’an immediate extension of the cancerconsultation clinic system in New Zealand. Doctors here had made excellent progress—better than in the United States—in cutting the death rate from cancer of the cervix, he said. It was time the twin problems of cancer of the colon and rectum were tackled vigorously here—by periodic and specific organ scrutiny tests. “No other part of the body, apart from the cervix, lends itself to study so easily,” he said. “These types are the common cancer to both sexes.” Periodic Checks If there was an organised attack —by doctors and societies banding together for scrutiny measures—“mortality from these types of cancer would decline.” He recommended periodic organ scrutiny for women over 45 and men over 50.

Dr. Wangensteen also strongly advised people with cancer of the stomach to undergo surgery. With local cancers of the stomach the cure rate was 75 per cent. It was time to form a “cancer smokers’ anonymous” organisation, Dr. Wangensteen said. He was emphatic about the link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. “If you are a male and you smoke,” he said, “then I suggest you give it up.” He save this advice on the basis of “all the evidence there is available.” At a question time there was only one question—on lung -ancer and cigarettes. In reply, Dr. Wangensteen suggested that present statistical evidence was “good enough.” As for filters, he said: “They are a misnomer—obviously they do not do very much.”