HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text Submit a response Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when Rapid Responses are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Harris, S. R Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Harris, S. R Related Collections Evidence-Based Practice All Editorials Social Bookmarking                      What's this?

Challenging Myths in Physical Therapy

Dr Harris is Professor, School of Rehabilitation Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC

Because this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the full text and any section headings.

	Introduction

 
As a young, hospital-based physical therapist in the early 1970s, I vividly recall a middle-aged patient who had undergone a radical mastectomy for treatment of breast cancer. Her chest was sunken and hollow following removal of the pectoral muscles, overlying skin, and supraclavicular lymph nodes. She had a gaping wound in her axilla where the lymph nodes had been cleared, making the range-of-motion exercises that I provided extremely painful. For almost 80 years, the Halsted radical mastectomy was the standard treatment for breast cancer in North America, a procedure that was both physically and psychologically debilitating.

An American surgeon named Bernard Fisher chose to challenge the myth that radical mastectomy was the only viable treatment for breast cancer. Through a series of large randomized controlled trials conducted in the 1970s and 1980s, Fisher's research team demonstrated that a much less invasive surgery—the partial mastectomy (lumpectomy), combined with radiation to the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?