Fear of Cancer

Fear, like pain (see below), has its good points. Fear sends the patient scurrying to the doctor to find out what, if anything, is wrong with him. But fear of cancer, especially among women, may go too far.

Among his patients, reports New York Gynecologist Robert T. Frank in the current Journal of the American Medical Association, "a large number are fear-stricken and panicky . . . They may . have been told tactlessly by their physician that they have a tumor in the breast, ovary or womb which requires immediate operation. [They] may resist all attempts to convince them that the condition is harmless, nonmalignant and does not require operation.

"Today, the widely publicized cancer campaigns [and] the overzealous, inexperienced routineers who man many clinics . . . who heedlessly and needlessly frighten patients, are rapidly increasing individual panic into a national stampede. Unchecked, this movement will leave in its wake a wide swath of hopelessly neurotic persons, of disabled and unnecessarily mutilated women."

Because the nonmalignant fibroid, or fibromyoma, of the uterus is by far the commonest tumor among women, says Dr. Frank, "the health, happiness and future morale of many a patient will rest on the tact, insight and kindliness with which the attending physician . . . enlightens her about [its] presence ... An incautious 'You have large fibroids . . . which must come out at once' may produce panic and ... in due time she will find an operator willing to mutilate her without valid indications." In the same issue of the Journal, Drs.

Harry C. Saltzstein and Robert S. Pollack report on fear of cancer of the breast. 'There are, perhaps, few conditions which cause as much anxiety and worry to the patient as do tumors of the breast. There are deep . . . reasons which make the thought of loss of the breast terrifying to the average woman."

Recent publicity about cancer, the two doctors declare, "seems to focus on a lump in the breast." Five years ago Saltzstein and Pollack got only the more serious cases, so that they performed as many operations for cancer as for "benign" (nonmalignant) tumors. Nowadays, women with less serious ailments rush in for consultation, and the doctors are performing twice as many operations for benign tumors as for cancer. And almost half the women who rush in, the doctors find, need no surgery at all.

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