Dr. Harness explains if you need to have breast cancer right away? Watch This Video. Treatment, facts & help from Dr. Jay Harness Pres. American Society of Breast Surgeons. St. Joseph Hospital Comprehensive Breast Center.

Dr. Jay Harness: One of the questions that I am commonly asked is “Don’t I need surgery right away? Isn’t the cancer spreading like wildfire through my body?”’ My answer is time is your friend. From the time of the first abnormal cancer cells when you are seeing me averages probably two to three years and some breast cancers are may be five even perhaps up to seven to ten years. So, the work that we do on the front end to try and decide what kind of surgery you need. What kind of treatment you need may take two or three weeks. But I constantly say time is your friend. Particularly, we only want to go the operating room once and we want to know exactly what we are going for and exactly what we are going to do.