Osakidetza has detected 9.300 tumors with its programme of breast cancer screening
Despite all the campaigns and initiatives of awareness -or perhaps because some of them show a version sweetened of the disease-the reality is that in around the breast cancer are still orbiting erroneous beliefs.
The data show that this type of tumor, the most common in women nowadays in Spain, kills per year to more than 6,000 women. They also point to figures that three out of every 10 patients diagnosed at early stages will suffer a relapse throughout their life. However, the 40% of spaniards believed, erroneously, that all the patients with this type of tumor are cured. So has revealed a survey released this week by the Spanish Group for Research in breast cancer (GEICAM).
Without doubt, both the arsenal available against the disease as its effectiveness, have experienced a very positive evolution in the last few years. In the early 80’s, the percentage of women with breast cancer who were disease-free at five years from diagnosis compared with about 70%. Today, however, this figure is close to 90%.
Have significantly improved the treatments and the knowledge of the disease -for example, we have identified 10 different subtypes of tumors, which has allowed us to customize each time to a greater extent treatments. But specialists warn that the road ahead is still long.
“The main challenge continues to be metastatic breast cancer, a scenario that discards the healing in the majority of cases”, says Álvaro Rodríguez-Lescure, vice-president of the Spanish Society of Medical Oncology (SEOM) and the head of service of Medical Oncology of the University Hospital of Elche. “Within this sphere, it is especially urgent to find treatments that are useful against triple-negative breast cancer, for which today there are no targets effective”, he adds.
“it Is important to emphasize all the advances that have been made against cancer, which have been spectacular, but without that it suppose to forget all the challenges that still need to be addressed,” says the specialist.
View of the microscope of cancer cells during the process of proliferation of a breast tumor VVG / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
This ignorance of the reality of the disease is not the most concern to oncologists, who stress that the main false belief that there is that combat is the one related to the use of pseudoterapias.
“Fortunately it is not frequent, it is still uncommon to find patients embrace therapies that may interfere with or even get them to leave the treatments effective, but they are now seen more cases of that were produced 20 years ago,” he says.
In that sense, the Spanish Federation of Breast Cancer (FECMA) made public a manifesto this week that, among other points, stresses the need to act before the release of the therapeutic proposals unviable or without scientific evidence.
“We have shown our concern by the fact that the pseudoterapias without scientific evidence may become a fad and some women, who live a very vulnerable situation, have the temptation to stop the medical treatment, with the risk that this poses to their health,” says Antonia Gimón, president of FECMA.
Various groups have asked the health authorities to cope with the pseudo-intensity is higher, and to ensure that “fraudsters will not go unpunished”.
“We’ve seen situations that make your hair stand on end”, says Gimón.
An example is the case that became public last summer, the oncologist Joaquim Bosch through social media and became viral. The doctor reported with impotence, visit the emergency department of a young woman with the chest torn apart by a breast cancer that was said to be healing with alternative therapies.
– And what about your therapist alternative which tells of the tumor,” said the oncologist.
-Says that if out is good, because it means that it is oxygenating.
The patient died within a few weeks.
“it Is very serious that this will happen, and it should be pursued with more hardness”, points out Rodríguez-Lescure, who has lived a similar experience, fortunately few, in your query.
“you Are missing a common strategy, which, among others, bringing together health authorities, professional colleges and the administration of justice, and that place means to protect their citizens and stop these practices that are so harmful to society”, he adds.
Antonia Gimón claims that in these cases I don’t blame you never to the patients, who are experiencing a time of extreme vulnerability.
“these Are people who are on the borderline, that they want to hold on to any hope. Put yourself in their place and not culpabilizarlas to them, but who really is playing with your health.”
on the other hand, to improve the knowledge about the disease, the manifesto FECMA claimed records of populations about the disease of homogeneous, structured and updated. “Today the coverage of the population registers in cancer barely reaches 17%, which means that there is a big margin for improvement,” says Gimón.
estimates show that are diagnosed around 26,000 new cancers of the breast per year in Spain. “But we want to have a picture more accurate, allowing to know with greater reliability in the age of people newly diagnosed cases of metastatic cancer and the number of deaths”.
