2018年翻譯資格考試中級筆譯模擬題：小腫瘤
漢譯英
有時候你可能知道得太多了。健康人群癌癥篩查的目的是發(fā)現(xiàn)可治療的小腫瘤，這似乎是值得稱贊的，而事實(shí)常常也是如此。不過，有時它會導(dǎo)致不必要的治療。機(jī)體自身有一套阻止小腫瘤生長的機(jī)制，對那些可用自身機(jī)制加以抑制的腫瘤采取治療非但無益，反而可能造成危害。
以肺癌為例。紐約紀(jì)念斯隆-凱特靈癌癥研究中心(Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre)的彼得•巴赫(Peter Bach)及其同事在本周出版的《美國醫(yī)學(xué)會雜志》(Journal of the American Medical Association)上發(fā)表的一項(xiàng)報(bào)告中指出，用于癥狀出現(xiàn)前肺部腫瘤檢測的計(jì)算機(jī)斷層掃描技術(shù)(computed tomography，CT)雖深受吹捧，但它可能根本無法降低肺癌死亡率，相反會“雪上加霜”。
有關(guān)CT用于肺癌篩查的報(bào)道始于去年�？的螤柎髮W(xué)克勞迪婭•赫恩施克(Claudia Henschke)和她的同事報(bào)道，患者經(jīng)CT早期診斷為肺癌后，長期生存率顯著提高。這一報(bào)道轟動一時。她的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，88%的確診患者10年后仍有望存活。巴赫在另一研究中也發(fā)現(xiàn)了類似結(jié)果：94%診斷為早期肺癌的患者生存期可達(dá)4年。
盡管如此，僅憑生存期的統(tǒng)計(jì)數(shù)據(jù)是無法回答這樣一個基本問題的：“與什么相比?”早期診斷無疑可延長生存期，但早期診斷后患者預(yù)后必須良好，否則早期診斷就幾乎無任何價(jià)值。
因此，巴赫對自己的數(shù)據(jù)進(jìn)行了更為徹底的分析。他根據(jù)非CT檢出肺癌的研究結(jié)果建立了統(tǒng)計(jì)學(xué)模型，并假設(shè)其研究個體未接受CT篩查，從而對這些個體的預(yù)后進(jìn)行了評估，結(jié)果令人失望。
篩查確實(shí)可以發(fā)現(xiàn)更多的腫瘤病例。五年中，3200人有144人檢出肺癌，而預(yù)期值僅為44例。不過，盡管這些人得到早期診斷，但發(fā)展為晚期肺癌的人數(shù)并未減少，死亡人數(shù)也無顯著下降(預(yù)期為39人，實(shí)際有38人)�？紤]到早期診斷可使行腫瘤切除術(shù)的人數(shù)增加十倍(預(yù)期為11人，實(shí)際達(dá)109人)，而這種手術(shù)風(fēng)險(xiǎn)又大(術(shù)后死亡率5%，此外還有20~40%的患者出現(xiàn)嚴(yán)重并發(fā)癥)，如此一來就有可能造成更大危害。
參考譯文
Sometimes you can know too much. The aim of screening healthy people for cancer is to discover tumors when they are small and treatable. It sounds laudable and often it is. But it sometimes leads to unnecessary treatment. The body has a battery of mechanisms for stopping small tumors from becoming large ones. Treating those that would have been suppressed anyway does no good and can often be harmful.
Take lung cancer. A report in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association, by Peter Bach of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York and his colleagues, suggests that, despite much fanfare around the use of computed tomography (CT) to detect tumors in the lungs well before they cause symptoms, the test may not reduce the risk of dying from the disease at all—indeed, it may make things worse.
The story begins last year, when Claudia Henschke of Cornell University and her colleagues made headlines with a report that patients whose lung cancer had been diagnosed early by CT screening had excellent long-term survival prospects. Her research suggested that 88% of patients could expect to be alive ten years after their diagnosis. Dr Bach found similar results in a separate study. In his case, 94% of patients diagnosed with early-stage lung cancer were alive four years later.
Survival data alone, though, fail to answer a basic question: “compared with what?” People are bound to live longer after their diagnosis if that diagnosis is made earlier. Early diagnosis is of little value unless it results in a better prognosis.
Dr Bach, therefore, interrogated his data more thoroughly. He used statistical models based on results from studies of lung cancer that did not involve CT screening, to try to predict what would have happened to the individuals in his own study if they had not been part of that study. The results were not encouraging.
Screening did, indeed, detect more tumors. Over the course of five years, 144 cases of lung cancer were picked up in a population of 3,200, compared with a predicted number of 44. Despite these early diagnoses, though, there was no reduction in the number of people who went on to develop advanced cancer, nor a significant drop in the number who died of the disease (38, compared with a prediction of 39). Considering that early diagnosis prompted a tenfold increase in surgery aimed at removing the cancer (the predicted number of surgical interventions was 11; the actual number was 109), and that such surgery is unsafe—5% of patients die and another 20-40% suffer serious complications—the whole process seems to make things worse.
熱點(diǎn)關(guān)注：2018年翻譯資格考試catti二級筆譯練習(xí)(70篇)
