Should doctors stop using the word 'cancer'?

A doctor is shown in this undated stock photo. (Steve Cukrov/Shutterstock.com)

Researchers from the University of Sydney suggest that doctors who use the word “cancer” when diagnosing low-risk forms of the disease can inadvertently cause patient stress and anxiety, thus leading to unnecessary treatments.

“Evidence is mounting that disease labels affect people’s psychological responses and their decisions about management options,” says the analysis, which was recently published in The BMJ. “The use of more medicalised labels can increase both concern about illness and desire for more invasive treatment.”

Dropping the word “cancer,” the researchers suggest, could thus make patients more willing to agree to “active surveillance” in cases where “cancers are non-growing or so slow growing that they will never cause harm if left undetected.”

Doctors, however, appear loathe to stop using the word.

Speaking to CTV’s Your Morning, Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an internal medicine physician at Toronto General Hospital, said it’s important that doctors “have the utmost transparency with patients.”

“I use the word cancer if there is a diagnosis of cancer,” he stated. “But it really has to be communicated in the appropriate manner.”

Some low-risk forms of the disease -- such as papillary thyroid cancer, chronic lymphocytic leukemia and ductal carcinoma in situ breast cancer -- Bogoch notes, “may cause no problems for the duration of an individual’s life.”

In such cases, Bogoch says, doctors simply need to monitor the cancers to ensure they’re not growing or spreading.

“Certainly, we don’t typically refrain from using the word cancer… but we also have to frame the message and especially when we’re seeing cases of rather benign cancers or cancers that might not need any treatment at all,” he explained. “We have to communicate that very clearly with patients so that they’re not nervous and so that they might not seek out other treatments or take actions that might be more harmful.”