News & Events: Breast Cancer Prevention

Renowned breast surgeon Laura J. Esserman, MD, MBA gave a captivating talk about her richly textured life and innovative research at a Staff Engagement Event hosted by the Department of Surgery on February 9th at UCSF Mount Zion. The research portion of her talk focused on two landmark clinical trials she serves as principal investigator on. The first, the WISDOM Study (Women Informed to Screen Depending on Measures of Risk (WISDOM), is a pragmatic, adaptive, randomized clinical trial comparing a comprehensive risk-based, or personalized approach to traditional annual breast cancer [...]

An article commentary recently published in NPJ Breast Cancer, a Nature Research journal, discusses the WISDOM Study (Women Informed to Screen Depending on Measures of Risk (WISDOM), a groundbreaking clinical trial recruiting 100,000 women from throughout California that will compare annual breast cancer screening with personalized risk-based breast cancer screening. The study is led by Laura J. Esserman, MD, MBA (pictured), professor of surgery and director of the Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. She and the other Wisdom Study [...]

The NY Times profiled UCSF breast cancer surgeon Dr. Laura Esserman and her challenge to  the conventional wisdom surrounding breast cancer screening. Esserman argues that most patients will not benefit from early detection of ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) lesions and further that the ominous word "carcinoma" be dropped from the medical term and the condition renamed "indolent lesions of epithelial origin," or IDLEs. Late one afternoon this summer, Dr. Laura J. Esserman, a breast cancer surgeon at the University of California, San Francisco, sat in a darkened room scrutinizing a [...]

UCSF News reports on a new study, led by breast cancer researcher Laura Esserman, MD, MBA,  that will compare a personalized approach to breast cancer screening with annual mammograms. A research team at UC San Francisco has won a five-year award of $14.1 million from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to investigate whether a personalized approach to breast cancer screening is as safe and effective as annual mammograms. The project, called the WISDOM study, will be led by breast cancer researcher Laura Esserman, MD, MBA, professor of surgery and director of the [...]

UCSF News reports on the recommendations of an NCI scientific panel chaired by Laura Esserman, MD, MBA, Professor of Surgery and Radiology and Director, UCSF Carol Franc Buck Breast Care Center,  to reduce overdiagnosis and overtreatment. To address the growing problem of people being overdiagnosed and overtreated for cancer, a group of scientists convened by the National Cancer Institute and chaired by a UC San Francisco breast cancer expert is proposing a major update of the way the nation approaches diseases now classified as "cancer." The "Viewpoint" article was published online [...]