While it shouldn’t be known what variety of cancer Princess Catherine is affected by, oncologists say what she described in her public statement released on Friday – finding the cancer during one other procedure, on this case “major abdominal surgery” – is all too common.
“Unfortunately, most of the cancers we diagnose are unexpected,” said Dr. Elena Ratner, a gynecologic oncologist at Yale Cancer Center who has diagnosed many patients with ovarian cancer, uterine cancer and endometrial cancer.
Without speculating on Catherine’s procedure, Dr. Ratner described situations wherein women seek surgery due to endometriosis, a disease wherein tissue just like the liner of the uterus is found elsewhere within the abdomen. Often, Dr. Ratner says, endometriosis is assumed to have occurred within the ovary and caused a benign ovarian cyst. However, after a week or two, when the supposedly benign tissue was examined, pathologists report that they found cancer.
In a statement, Duchess Catherine said she was undergoing a “course of preventive chemotherapy”.
This can be common. In the medical community, this is frequently called adjuvant chemotherapy.
Dr. Eric Winer, director of the Yale Cancer Center, said adjuvant chemotherapy “will hopefully prevent further problems” and the cancer from returning.
It also means “everything that was visible during surgery has been removed,” said Dr. Michael Birrer, director of the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute on the University of Arkansas. “You can’t see the cancer,” he added, because microscopic cancer cells can remain. He explained that chemotherapy is a technique to attack a microscopic disease.
Other parts of Catherine’s statement also hit home for Dr. Ratner, especially her concern for her family.
“William and I have done everything we can to process and manage this matter privately for the sake of our young family,” Catherine said. “It took us some time to explain everything to George, Charlotte and Louis in a way they could understand and reassure them that everything would be fine.”
These are opinions that Dr. Ratner hears often, and which he says show “how difficult it is to diagnose cancer in women.”
“I see it every day,” she said. “Women at all times ask, ‘Will I be there for my children?’ What will occur to my children?
“They don’t say, ‘What will happen to me?'”
