How Patients and Oncologists Engage in Mutual Delusion on Cancer Mortality and Life Expectancy

ByShaun Snapp

Executive Summary

  • One of the little-discussed topics of oncology is how both oncologists and patients do not address the issue of life expectancy as part of the cancer prognosis.

Introduction

One of the significant areas not covered by the establishment media or any medical entity is that cancer patients have a highly inaccurate understanding of their life expectancy.

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Major Misunderstandings Among Cancer Patients

How this occurs is explained in the following quotation from the article How Long Have I Got, Doc?’ Why Many Cancer Patients Don’t Have Answers.

In the past four years, Bruce Mead-e has undergone two major surgeries, multiple rounds of radiation and chemotherapy to treat his lung cancer. Yet in all that time, doctors never told him or his husband whether the cancer was curable — or likely to take Mead-e’s life.

“We haven’t asked about cure or how much time I have,” said Mead-e, 63, of Georgetown, Del., in a May interview. “We haven’t asked, and he hasn’t offered. I guess we have our heads in the sand.”

Yes, that is the definition of heads in the sand, which we took at the graphic for this article.

At a time when expensive new cancer treatments are proliferating rapidly, patients such as Mead-e have more therapy choices than ever before. Yet patients like him are primarily kept in the dark because their doctors either can’t or won’t communicate clearly.

And there is very little communication about the effectiveness of any of these treatments to patients, so the treatment effectiveness also has a halo effect, as it is nearly always assumed to be more effective than it is.

How Many Cancer Patients Know Their Predicted Life Expectancy?

Surprisingly, huge numbers of cancer patients lack basic information, such as how long they can expect to live, whether their condition is curable or why they’re being prescribed chemotherapy or radiation, said Dr. Rab Razzak, director of outpatient palliative medicine at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore.

The result: People with advanced cancer don’t know enough about their disease to make informed decisions about treatment or how they want to spend their remaining time.

“Avoiding these issues is really irresponsible,” said Dr. Ira Byock, executive director at the Institute for Human Caring of Providence Health & Services, based in Torrance, Calif.

It’s irresponsible but highly profitable.

  • First, they can lose revenue if they tell patients the truth.
  • Second, they can lose the patient who will try to find a more optimistic answer with a different oncologist who offers them more “hope.”
  • Third, if the patients know how low their likelihood of survival and life expectancy is — they will be far less likely to submit to costly and painful treatments.