Jan 24, 2009 05:09AM - edited Jan 24, 2009 05:44AM by leaf
Can is a big word. Can means not only might there ever have been 1 case that has grown this fast, but can there THEORETICALLY be a breast cancer that grows at rate X. Remember, theoretically, all the air on your side of the room can travel to the other side of the room, leaving you in a vacuum. This is possible, but HIGHLY unlikely.
Fibroadenomas (which are benign) can grow rapidly too. Growth is not a good measure to find out if something is benign or malignant.
But to answer your question, they tried to measure tumors mammographically in this study.
Introduction Knowledge of tumor growth is important in the
planning and evaluation of screening programs, clinical trials,
and epidemiological studies. Studies of tumor growth rates in
humans are usually based on small and selected samples. In the
present study based on the Norwegian Breast Cancer
Screening Program, tumor growth was estimated from a large
population using a new estimating procedure/model.
Methods A likelihood-based estimating procedure was used,
where both tumor growth and the screen test sensitivity were
modeled as continuously increasing functions of tumor size. The
method was applied to cancer incidence and tumor
measurement data from 395,188 women aged 50 to 69 years.
Results Tumor growth varied considerably between subjects,
with 5% of tumors taking less than 1.2 months to grow from 10
mm to 20 mm in diameter, and another 5% taking more than 6.3
years. The mean time a tumor needed to grow from 10 mm to 20
mm in diameter was estimated as 1.7 years, increasing with age.
The screen test sensitivity was estimated to increase sharply
with tumor size, rising from 26% at 5 mm to 91% at 10 mm.
Compared with previously used Markov models for tumor
progression, the applied model gave considerably higher model
fit (85% increased predictive power) and provided estimates
directly linked to tumor size.
Conclusion Screening data with tumor measurements can
provide population-based estimates of tumor growth and screen
test sensitivity directly linked to tumor size. There is a large
variation in breast cancer tumor growth, with faster growth
among younger women.www.medisin.ntnu.no/ism/nofe/Konferanse_2008/arets_artikkel_2008.pdf
Fibroadenomas can grow quickly too. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14519878
Imaging is not 100% reliable. There are people who have had negative mammos, found a lump, and positive mammos within a few weeks. That does NOT mean that the tumor grew from nothing to a detectable tumor in 1 month.
The usual figures you see about lumps is that most breast cancers (this does not mean ALL breast cancers) are thought to be in the body for some 6-10 years before they can be detected by ANY means.