Cancer Detection Clinics

Abstract

Well-patient clinics or examination centers, commonly called “Cancer Prevention,” “Cancer Detection,” or “Health Maintenance Clinics,” have captured the imagination of the public and today great pressure is being exerted upon the medical profession to inaugurate such clinics in many communities. It is interesting to remind ourselves that for years county medical societies and their parent body, The American Medical Association, have sponsored and stimulated yearly physical examinations. In spite of all kinds of propaganda, yearly examinations did not excite very much interest among physicians or the public. This lack of interest in yearly physical examinations, both on the part of physicians and the public, was to be expected for several reasons: medical schools even today do not, as a rule, emphasize the importance of general physical examinations in well people; the medical student is more interested in disease; the apparently healthy public is not educated to the necessity or value of yearly examinations, and doctors generally neglect their own health. The value of periodic medical examinations has received great emphasis from the educational program of the American Cancer Society, the experience obtained in the “Selective Service System,” and the pilot experiments of Dr. Elise S. L' Esperance in New York City, of Dr. Catherine Macfarlane, Dr. Margaret C. J. Sturgis and Dr. Faith S. Fetterman in Philadelphia, the Cancer Prevention Clinics of the Donner Foundation, and those of Dr. Augusta Webster and her colleagues in Chicago. The well-patient clinic or the detection center is not a diagnostic center; it is not a tumor clinic. It is not designed for cancer patients, but it is an examination center, organized for the examination of apparently well people. Its primary objective is to detect early cancer, precancerous lesions, or areas of chronic irritation which might lead to cancer, sooner than they would otherwise be discovered. The examination includes all of the studies that can be obtained from any good general practitioner. The centers do not give treatment nor do they undertake such procedures as biopsy. Their function is to provide a thorough physical examination with special emphasis on conditions which might lead to cancer. Early manifestations of other diseases also are detected. The name “Cancer Prevention Clinic” has been adopted by many groups. Others prefer “Cancer Detection Clinics.” “Examination Centers” or “Health Maintenance Clinics,” although perhaps more correct, do not attract the public's attention to the same extent. Dr. J. R. Miller (1) of Hartford, Conn., has stated: “I am not at all sure that the detection clinic has come to stay. Certainly if general practitioners undertake this work satisfactorily in their own offices, there should be no place for it.