Re: Dormancy of Mammary Carcinoma After Mastectomy

Extract

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 (2–5).