Correspondence to: John S. Spratt, M.D., University of Louisville, Brown Cancer Center, Department of Surgical Oncology, 529 South Jackson St., Rm. 317, Louisville, KY 40202-1671.
The article by Karrison et al. (1) argues incorrectly that the long, latent period before the recurrence of breast cancer after mastectomy is due to dormant cells. An alternate and better documented explanation is the extreme variation in the actual tumor volume doubling time. How the variation in actual growth rates affects the extremes of disease duration has been well documented in previous publications and has been reviewed recently (25).
REFERENCES
1
Karrison TG, Ferguson DJ, Meier P. Dormancy of mammary carcinoma after mastectomy. J Natl Cancer Inst 1999;91:805.
2 Spratt JS. Growth rates. In: Donegan WL, Spratt JS, editors. Cancer of the breast. 4th ed. Philadelphia (PA): Saunders; 1995. p. 31745.
3 Spratt JS, Meyer JS, Spratt JA. Rates of growth of human solid neoplasms: Part I. J Surg Oncol 1995;60:13746.[Medline]
4 Spratt JS, Meyer JS, Spratt JA. Rates of growth of human solid neoplasms: Part II. J Surg Oncol 1996;61:6883.[Medline]
5 Friberg S, Mattson S. On the growth rates of human malignant tumors: implications for medical decision making. J Surg Oncol 1997;65:28497.[Medline]
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