When You Have Cancer, But You're Fine: Cancer Overdiagnosis 

I was born with Cancer in my eyes. 5 years, 73 surgeries, two times the amount of radiation that a human being is supposed to endure in life, having my eyes frozen solid twice, then having my left eye removed entirely while my right remains in the form of a small ball of scar tissue with only a miniscule amount of vision left within it and my physical facial appearance negatively altered to the point where I've continuously experienced terrible interactions with an uncountable number of "cruel people" in this world... and... 30-some years later I was told 'Its possible the cancer would've gone away if they'd just left it alone because you had no family history of that type of cancer which means it may have been the kind that goes away after a year or so." Me: I'm not a real big fan of life.

"Hey google.. I have " Google: You have cancer.

Thank you so much for this video. I was diagnosed with myxoinflammatory fibroblastic sarcoma on my ear. The recommendation from the specialists was to remove my whole ear. My doctor told everyone to chill out. He said it was a low level cancer with a low malignancy rate sitting on ear cartilage. The specialists are just being over cautious. Instead, he numbed my ear with a local, took about 15 minutes to removed it, then burned the remaining tissue under it. After almost two years, still cancer free. But my wife still says I don't listen to her........or something like that.

Me. Chondrosarcoma, fairly slow growing and often harmless cancer. In my case it was growing within the skull and while symptoms were almost non existent it was putting pressure on the brain stem, eye nerve, and pituitary so it was removed.... mostly. Some was calcified and couldn’t be removed so it is still in there..... I named the tumor Dave.... Dave and I get along pretty well now.

plot twist: web md was right the whole time

For anyone watching, please do not let this discourage you from having suspicious lumps or growths checked by a doctor. Better to spend an hour in a waiting room to have a doctor confirm your wierd mole is just wierd, than find out it was basal cell carcinoma and it's progressed to stage 4. A doctor can help you decide if something should be a wait-and-watch situation. But these statistics should not make you feel that you, at home, can decide a possible cancer symptom is harmless.

They found a tumor in my cousins thryoid last month and they were freaking out but then when he went back they couldn't find it. Dad's also had a couple non malignant tumors in his lungs clear up. I should send them this.

They also need to work on adding some nuance to the staging guidelines. Our whole family was put through so much unnecessary stress and grief earlier this year when my dad was diagnosed with throat cancer. Preliminary results were that he had ACC, which has a bittersweet prognosis of approx 80% 10-yr survival rate that plummets to about 30% for the 15-yr survival rate. Then our oncologist took another look and determined it was just regular throat cancer, but it had metastasized and was either stage 4a or 4b, which was absolutely devastating. Finally we got an appointment with Moffit for our final opinion and they told us that, while technically it would be classified as stage 4, we had no reason to worry bc the tumors had HPV virus in them, which makes it ridiculously easy to treat and the survival rate is 85-95%. While I’m extremely thankful that his cancer turned out to be pretty much a nonissue, it pisses me off beyond belief that our family had to endure weeks of the most intense sadness all bc our first oncologists couldn’t explain to us the significance of that one aspect of his biopsy.

" sorry I've got weird cells ..gotta go home"

Why Dr. House hated full body scans!

Yeah, a couple of years ago I was diagnosed with DCIS (the very earliest stage of breast cancer), and I had surgery and radiation. But just recently they changed the guidelines, and the treatment for DCIS is now "watchful waiting".

The word "cancer" should only be used for malignant tumors. Benign growth is not cancer. You are right, it is hard to differentiate between benign and malignant tumors based on imaging especially when the tumor is small.

Our immune system, in addition to fighting and preventing infections, also detect and destroy abnormal cells - it's called "Immune Surveillance". Our bodies may be constantly killing off malignant and premalignant cells all of the time without any symptoms. Great episode for pointing out this side of "cancer"! 👍

As someone who was diagnosed with papillary thyroid "cancer", this is great to hear. If I had been given a better explanation of this type of info and all my options I might not have rushed into surgery to have a total thyroidectomy. It led to severe nerve damage and hypoparathyroidism. At the time the doctor seemed more concerned with assuring me I wouldn't lose my voice, a pretty low ranking risk. Since then I learned that my type of thyroid cancer is now going through the process of potentially being reclassified and treatment options reevaluated by. Mine was very fast growing and I was starting to experience hypothyroid symptoms and I think I might have reached the same conclusion to have a total thyroidectomy but I wouldn't have felt the pressure to jump to surgery so quickly, especially with an ENT surgeon who was so inexperienced that me basically butchered me and I now have life long consequences.

I absolutely agree with the “cancer” word being more problematic than anything. When they told me I had cervical cancer (it’s gone now)… I completely freaked out and started doing heavy amounts of drugs. I was too scared to go back to the clinic for months cuz I thought the next thing they’d tell me is how many days left I had to live. Turns out I really over reacted. 🤗 I’m in recovery now. 💫

My surgeon pretty much said what was explained here, scans can lead to unnecessary worry, and it can be difficult to determine when action is necessary. 2 years since my diagnosis...

Hank, you are my hero. I stumbled on your crash course chemistry series years ago and I've been a fan of your personality and content ever since. Keep on delivering your excellence my good man!!

I imagine this wouldn't be an issue if we had better less invasive cancer treatments available.

To be honest I thought we would already call only the bad ones cancer and everything else would be labeled as a tumor. There may be differences in language though since English is not my native language.

Doctors: “early detection is key when treating cancers” Also doctors: “no not that early”

Cancer biologist here While there are points that this video gets correct, a large percentage of this video is misleading or flat out wrong. First, the definition of cancer. There is no dispute regarding the definition of cancer amongst professionals. If it is cancer, then it is malignant. The technical term you are looking for is “neoplasm,” which includes cancer as well as non-cancerous lesions and hyperplastic (abnormal) cells. Doctors may refer to a neoplasm as “cancer” just to simplify medical lingo for lay people, but the difference is well understood; your statement of finding a bunch of cancers over the years is completely incorrect. Second, your video purports that the reason why everyone isn’t getting cancer is because all the “harmless cancers” found from overdiagnosis would just go away on their own. This is a flat out lie. There are (very few) papers that HYPOTHESIZE the regression of certain tumors as a reason for overdiagnosis, but to suggest that this is a commonplace occurrence is incredibly harmful and misleading. While spontaneous tumor regression is a documented phenomenon, it is INCREDIBLY rare (as in 1 in 100,000 cases). This is possibly caused by immune surveillance (your immune system recognizing the cancer and destroying it). When it comes to immune surveillance, it does indeed play a significant part in preventing cancer; this is a widely accepted fact, but the immune system’s function in cancer prevention happens on the level of single cells, not on the level of tumors that are already detectable by imaging. Finally, you discuss indolent cancers as if they were harmless cancers. This is also incorrect. Indolent just means that the cancer spreads slowly - that’s it. It does not mean that they don’t cause symptoms, and it does not mean that they will go away by themselves. Indolent cancers do kill, and they must be treated depending on the patient. If the patient is very old and is unlikely to live 10 years, for example, then it would be pointless to treat the patient because the cancer is indolent. However, if you were 45 and diagnosed with an indolent cancer - say prostate cancer or thymoma (note: not all cases of these cancers are indolent) - we would definitely want to treat you.

Before I turned one I had astrocytoma stage 2 which was removed. It was so large that it nearly killed me. Since it's a alow growing cancer usually found in older people, it must have been growing when I was in the womb. It took the feeling in my legs and they said I would never walk. (I can) Edit: The tissue was discolored so they were able to remove it via surgery.

A hypochondriac might freak out watching this video.

I had a Yolk Sac tumor, which is a highly aggressive one. I don't know how it works for other malignant tumors, but for the one I got, the blood tests (LDH, AFP, HCG) and clinical conditions (eg. pain) were what truly mattered. They usually ask for image scans to check whether you got any suspicious mass on key spots, like abdominal lymph nodes; it's more for confirmation purposes though. After chemo, they ask for the same scans, but that's to check if the tumor has completely disappeared. This one seems to be important to check.

I always found it amusing to tell people I have a tumor in my leg. It's fairly big, you can feel it easily and even see it if my leg is in a certain position, and people always get all wide-eyed and fearful when I tell/show them. I always take a beat before I say it's benign for my own amusement; I've had it since like 12 or 14 and since it's on my bone the doctors were like 'yeah it'll stop growing when you stop growing; if you wanna take it out we can but it'd be major surgery for something that's not causing you pain or impairment' so we opted to leave it. Been my buddy ever since.

I had thyroid cancer when i was 18... i never felt sick before, only the treatment made me feel sick.. and for the whole time doctors weren't sure if the cancer was malignant or not, but they treated it just in case.... now i have to eat thyroid medicine for the rest of my life because the removed my thyroid Dx

Cancer: (Sees the title) Cancer: *Am I a joke to you?*

Our own immune system is very good at getting rid of some cancers as well. I've had several cancerous moles just fall off a few days after I noticed they looked different. I still got them checked out, you can never be too careful with moles.

Honestly, I never thought this was a problem because I was taught that for both human and veterinary medicine, “cancer” means malignant, and tumor means benign. Now that’s not what each means literally but you don’t say someone has “cancer” if they have a benign fatty tumor. You take a biopsy and find out! Now if it’s melanoma, I don’t know of any melanomas that are benign, but maybe they can figure out better when something is malignant melanoma or not.

My mom's friend was diagnosed with breast cancer today, and I come on RU-vid and see this. I'm hoping it's a sign and her breast cancer isn't malignant and she will be fine 🤞

"I've got weird cells... I've got to go home" reminds me of when Obesity got added to the WHO's list of diseases. My friend suggested I call out of work because I got a bad case of the Fats.

I don't know what's so hard about cancer?? I'm already on stage 4

I freeking love SciShow. I can't wait until i get my finances together so i can support you guys. Let's see that six Million subscribers!

I think it's important to say that yes, there are ways of describing growths precisely. Tumor staging and grading is one example.

As someone battling malignant breast cancer, I would have given anything for my biopsy results to be normal.

“Sorry, I got weird cells, gotta go home.”

I think what would also be a good narrative to add to this is that people get overprescribed meds a lot that are unnecessary most of the time. Opioids, antidepressant, etc. Sadly, we learn that overprescribing can be a bad thing the more we learn about medical science.

Even in the series House md, they said the doc didn't liked full body scans cause you could find at least 3 things wrong that are not the problem when people get sick.

I thought we already have the distinction like that - tumor (used in reference to harmless types, theoretically cancers are tumors but pragmatically nobody will call a cancer a tumor, and effectively that word is used only for the harmless ones) and cancer (harmful type of tumor that can spread)... at least that's how it functions in Polish - nowotrów (literally "newgrowth", tumor), and rak (crayfish/cancer).

Doctor: You have diagnosed with cancer Me: *OR HAVE I!* Doctor: ....yes

As someone who just beat Hodgkin's lymphoma, I find this video very interesting

My aunt was diagnosed with “stage 0” cancer. She had a quick precautionary procedure and she was fine. But since then she posts all the time about being a *CANCER SURVIVOR* and how people don’t understand what it’s like to have cancer. Tbh it’s insensitive to people who actually go through chemo and actually suffer from their disease

Can't say I completely agree. My mom was suffering from headaches and all the doctors told her was that it was allergies. Only because we knew she wasn't acting normal we kept pushing it. We got an MRI done and the doctor said there was a mass but it wasn't anything to worry about. If we didn't keep pushing we wouldn't have gotten her lymphoma in her brain diagnosed after 2 months from her initial symptoms. If they had taken her seriously she could've had an earlier treatment and possible recovery. Sadly she has passed away after battling for 5 months. 2 months extra could've made a huge difference...........

My Dad was diagnosed with non small cell lung cancer. 6 months and 2 weeks later we buried him. It’s a brutal death.

Yeah I've had tiny tumors in the joints of my fingers that went away in 3 - 5 days, and that's common for this sort of benign "cancer"

"And their wallets" Gods I'm glad I live in the UK...

Video: some cancers are harmless, so we need to develop better tests for when we should treat cancers. Inevitable popular media stories: Should we not bother treating cancer any more?

I swear Hank has to be the best educational host on RU-vid

When I was 29, after a multitude of tests I was told I had terminal colon cancer that has gone through the colon walls and I was given 8-12 months without treatment, possibly longer with treatment. I left and never went back, did some minor holistic stuff and prepared to die. That meant trying to cram as much as I could do into that time frame. I'm 58 now. When I finally allowed a simple colonoscopy at age 48 they found no abnormalities. Had they not done so many types of tests to confirm cancer I would say it was a misdiagnosis. I just call it a miracle now.

It all points back to The prime rule of health: too much or too little is always dangerous

So many previously dangerous cancers are now treatable and survivable, but only IF you have a properly resourced National Health Service. Overdiagnosis is less of an issue if you properly fund options to monitor and regularly scan for changes. If you live in a country like US where ordinary people can't afford cancer treatment, it must be terrifying.

Similar studies misrepresented by news outfits came out in Fukushima awhile back. Not accounting for overdetection along with not accounting for how treatable thyroid cancer is ended up causing some pretty predictable errors in attributable excess mortality.

I know two people who were diagnosed with early stage cancers, one thyroid and one prostate. Both ultimately had them removed (the whole thing, not just the cancer), and after watching this, I'm wondering if it was actually necessary, especially with the thyroid cancer.

When asking questions like this we need to stop asking if people “live longer” as the result of some intervention or not, and instead ask if they live to a normal life expectancy. IMHO extending someone’s life by a few years may be positive progress in terms of the treatment of cancer in general and yes we should of course collect such stats. But when it comes to whether I want extensive screening done, the only question I care about is if my life will be saved. If I only get a few more years out of the deal on average and have to deal with a lot more false positives, no thank you.

I had a contrast abdominal CT done when I had appendicitis several years back. I was well enough to walk over to radiology for the CT. 2 bright spots showed up on the CT. One was the tip of my mildly inflamed appendix and the other was a "small abdominal mass". When I had my appendectomy done, the surgeon said that there were cysts on my right ovary. She didn’t do anything about the cysts though, they were simple cysts filled with clear fluid. The only things that the cysts cause for me are pain, slight irregularity in my cycle, and the very occasional missed period(I have like 1 or 2 every few years at the most). The cysts must have been the "small abdominal mass" that showed up on CT because nothing else was found that might suggest a tumor or other mass.

My friend is fighting stage4 cancer. She’s definitely not fine. :(

"harmless cancer" sounds like such an oxymoron

Honestly, I think this is what's happened with my cat. When he got old, somewhere between 20 and 23(?) (we can't know for sure because he was already an adult when the shelter found him, and all evidence pointed to him having been born a stray), he was found to have lung cancer. It hadn't spread yet, and it wasn't negatively affecting his quality of life yet, and at his age, him going through treatment wouldn't be worth it. We were told to bring him back for check ups to see how it progresses, and that if anything had to be done, it would just be to keep him comfortable until his time came. It's hard to tell with cats, but we were told we had maybe three months left with him. That was in January of this year. It hasn't spread, it hasn't gotten worse, and it hasn't actually caused any problems for him. He's got some unrelated arthritis that he has some pain killers for, but other than that he's his usual self. If he hadn't come down with a chest infection (which quickly cleared up with medication) that lead to the tests and scans, we'd never even have known he had cancer.

I was just trying to explain this to someone and this video does it better. Thank you.

I used to think cancer was easily treatable and rarely deadly. Then it killed my Dad when he was 55. Now it's ALWAYS a death sentence for me, even though I know that's not true.

I always thought if they were benign they were just called tumors, and they weren’t called cancer unless they were malignant.

Good episode. It has been said before that there are no healthy people, just under-screened people. Another thing about screening and early diagnosis are the concepts of lead time bias and length bias. Both of these will cause a higher number of the screened population to be alive in 5 years from diagnosis, while not changing the date of death - but it will increase the time of morbidity - when they know they are "cancer patients" and receiving treatment for it that has serious side effects.

I hear these discussions and while I understand and agree with 99%, the common sense side of my brain is just waiting for the train wreck that will inevitably follow by all those who take these discussions out of context! It can be difficult for many people to grasp the biochemical puzzle that is the human body, even when it’s working precisely as it should! To a certain extent I think the medical industry as a whole would benefit in the long run if there was a way to increase both empathy and honesty across medicine as a whole but especially when it comes to terminal illnesses and cancers. Many times patients are put through treatments and trials even though the doctors know that logically this treatment will not make a difference. The doctors are simply unprepared to give up and have that very frank, honest discussion with patients. Too many doctors get so focused on extending the time the patient had left that they totally ignore the quality of life. Too often, families and patients don’t realize until it’s too late that instead of grasping at more time, they should have focused on using the time they did have to enjoy one another. It’s heart breaking to watch. These are issues that you will find regardless of how prestigious the doctor or how many experts are in a hospital! My mother was found to have primary brain cancer, with dual pathology (two separate forms of cancer), Glioblastoma Multiforme and Oligodendroglioma. My dad, myself and my two daughters rallied to take care of her. My dad was the one working to pay for everything. I was my mom’s ‘Primary Care Giver’ and my girls were the distraction and reminder of joy for my mom. Dad & I took her to every appointment, therapy session, surgery, radiation treatment. We were a team on that front. I’m the one dad calls ‘Nurse Ratched’ because I quickly become an expert on every condition, pro/con, side effect, medication, treatment, therapy, medication, etc. I have no problem being the confrontational one... whether it’s with a doctor, nurse, tech, pharmacist or the patient themselves, I make sure to arch mistakes (because there are always many), I’m the cheerleader on hard days, I’m the feisty one on days of selfpity, I’m the sounding board on the days of anger.... but most of all, I’m the one who takes the info from every direction to ensure we all stay grounded in reality. If you have a patient, her spouse of 40 years, you tell them the patient has the most aggressive form of cancer a person can have, you have to be extremely careful with comments that can give false hope. My mom was being seen at Emory University’s Winship cancer center, one of the best in the country. But to tell that patient and her spouse things like “well we do have patients who have lived for 20 years after GBM/ODG” without qualifying that comment can cause utter hell. I knew what the numbers were. I knew what her underlying issues were. I knew she was not going to be a 20 year survivor. I let my dad and mom leave the exam room and cornered the doctor to ask if he really thought there was any chance for my mom, and automatically he looked at the ground and couldn’t speak. My comment was simple, do not give them false hope. My parents had been together since school. Do not tell my dad that if he plays his cards right he could have his wife for another 20 years if it’s not true! Honesty and empathy are two things that are greatly needed!

This video is so important

Why is Endometriosis not cancer? It's tissue gone rogue, it can grow back really fast if removed, it poses a higher risk of malicious cancer and it is inflaming and scarring the place it's growing on, but does not care. I had it removed 3 times, 2 times it came back until they removed the infested organ that had been 90% destroyed. I am really curious, how this is not cancer.

My urologist told me my bladder cells looked like cancer. So I had to give up a month of donating plasma (was making more than your average bear), pay a guy $40 to transfer me to the hospital a month later to get a biopsy to see how bad it was. NO cancer! I needed that money I lost as I'm losing my place to live in Dec. What a wonderful world!

5:23 Naming it "IDLE disorder" might cause some confusion. Doctor: There's no need to worry, but I did find that you have an IDLE disorder. Patient: No, I took your advice and have been getting regular exercise.

I’m confused. If the “number” of deaths has remained the same from those cancers since 1975, would that not mean the rate or percentage has actually decreased by a great deal considering the population has increased by like 2 billion since 1975?

thinking about this, wouldnt we run the risk of undertreating the risky cancers if we don't treat 'every' lump?

THANK. YOU.

Been a while since I watched scishow videos (I used to bingewatch so much), still as informative in an interesting way as ever! Thanks for keeping up with the good content

They are good. And I am subscribed. To the channel, not to cancer.

Makes me wonder if my Thyroid cancer was one of those. It was super small, and they ended up removing my whole thyroid. But I feel much better now, so either way it was a good thing.

The videos are actually good, honestly

excellent content as always Sci Show team, thanks.

Pretty sure I have some weird cells. As a matter of fact, I think they're all weird.

definition of a healthy person - someone who has not been tested enough.

This video kind of hits different now that Hank has cancer :'(

It would be great if you had a numerical legend attached to your quotes to sources in the description to make it easy for us to double check what you mean. You mentioned that “the number of deaths for those cancers stayed pretty much the same” but I want to easily be able to see which study your referring to so I can see if the study accounted for population growth.

My dad passed away from lymphoma in 2011. He was diagnosed with both non-hodgkins and Hodgkins lymphoma (stage 4 - idk if both were stage 4) but was only treated for one of them because on spreads quickly and one would've taken 40 years before becoming a problem. That was the first time I've heard of slow spreading cancers, super interesting.

Yesterday i thought what if i have cancer and i don't know? I should go get tested even if there will be a false positive just to be sure. I think the universe wants to tell me something.

That 2005 study is very interesting. Over 900 of the 1200 patients were "self referred" for the scan (which I assume means they either hadn't sort a doctor's opinion or went against advice?). CT scans are high dosages of X-rays. Getting one without confirmed medical need seems fool hardy. X-ray exposure, especially high doses from CT scans, lead to a statistical increase in cancer rates. You're worried about possible cancer, so you risk possible future cancer to check?

I've just been diagnosed with : Cervical dysplasia, Brain tumour, I'm also undergoing investigations for endometrial cancer & Bowel cancer. It's not really a joke, but I was miss diagnosed for 8 years. With still not justice, the I'm sorry but the system does need to change. 👍

Incidentalomas. One of my favourite medical terms.

The major thing that will help with these screening overdiagnosis will be molecular biomarkers of the cancers. We are working on that in my company. If we can identify the markers for so called "malignancy", we can screen people with cheap molecular tests before they are screened and send them to biopsies if only they meet the malignancy criteria + abnormality in screening. Also further markers can help us after this stage as well. We can identify other markers to categorize patients to see which kind of treatments are more likely to help their malignant cancer. It is a growing industry as well. Hopefully, relatively soon we will have these

I recently read an article on this subject that said a number of doctors are beginning to argue against the use of regular mammograms because they so often lead to overdiagnosis and unnecessary stress and surgical procedures. They argue that regular breast self-exams are more likely to find growths that are actually problematic (mammograms find smaller growths that are less likely to be a problem).

Good episode. I'd like to see an episode of known cancer triggers.. Like that fungus found in peanuts that causes Liver cancer in children to 20% of HPV viral causation. As there are probably many things that are known to lead to these abnormal cell growths. Gladly the body often takes care of them before they become a problem.

Lumps depend on what they are and growth rate is how my doctor dealt with my thyroid lump because it grew so quickly and was better to get it done early, while I'm young, than to wait.

I watched a catalyst episode about this very subject when it came to prostate cancers, They showed that in most older men they were those super slow growing ones and removing them often did more harm than good as these the men were most likely going to die of old age before it caused issues. As far as I remember only monitoring them was the only way they could tell if it was a dangerous one or harmless slow growing type.

This was really beneficial Thank you!

This is both worry some and helpful. What we are being told it seems is not always best for us. Besides being worrisome it appears that many are over diagnosed and the treatments could turn Indolent cancers to malignant one.

Regarding Abnormal Findings, the trouble is that word is... loaded. I went in for a kidney stone at one point, and came back with a major abnormal finding after I was put through an abdominal CT. Turns out, I have a fused kidney. Right-side cross-fused ectopia, specifically. Which is to say, my kidneys aren't where they're supposed to be, and they're stuck together. Which, again, is an abnormal finding. It's also relatively harmless, so there's really no major worry there.

I know it's overused, but I'm gonna say it anyway: Mind. Blown. 🤯

I work in pathology and aided in many thyroid biopsies-they just changed the requirements to have a biopsy and has to measure at a certain amount before it can be biopsy. the thyroid biopsy isn’t a fun produce and the lets just wait and see is becoming more popular with this area.

love the title! great video, very interesting topic

Apparently I had a good Doctor. A 1/2 centimeter tumor was blocking my lower right lobe of my lung. After a biopsy and surgery to remove the 2 lower lobes of my right lung, the type of cancer was atypical carcinoid tumor, a type on very low grade cancer and some doctors don't consider it a cancer but could become worse after many years. The best treatment was removal. No chemo or anything other than an xray every 6 months for 5 years. This was 11 years ago. I am no longer dizzy or short of breath.

This is a serious and frightening problem. Being overdiagnosed means expense, anxiety and pain all needless. I don't want to go through all that.

"full body scan are useless, give me full body scan and i can point out over a dozen things wrong with you":- House MD.

I was told I had a tiny itty bitty tumor somewhere but it isnt growing. Always in the back of my mind (not literally) but I guess it’s part of life.

Hey Vsauce! Michael here. You... have Cancer. *music starts playing*