New treatments and quality of life, IEO ‘let’s look at breast cancer with different eyes’

2023-05-23 17:28:47

“We have been celebrating this day with our women for more than 15 years. And in all this time medicine has changed so much, the chances of recovery have changed, the quality of life of patients has changed. That’s why we could look at breast cancer ‘ with other eyes”. What hasn’t changed however is the perception of women: this is a diagnosis that still scares a lot and it is as if there is a gap that widens more and more between what is the clinical reality, with a percentage of healing that today for initial tumors exceeds 95% of cases, and what is the look, the feeling of women when they read the word cancer”. It is the image chosen by Paolo Veronesi, director of the Breast Program of the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, to describe the state of the art today for breast cancer to time.news Salute.

Veronesi talks about it on the occasion of the ‘Ieo for women’ day, an event dedicated by the Irccs in via Ripamonti to those who have experienced or are experiencing breast cancer, which has attracted over a thousand patients to the Manzoni Theater in Milan from the whole country. “Even if perhaps the diagnosis is a small non-invasive tumor in situ, for which a 100% cure is expected – she explains – this word still upsets life, takes away sleep. And women often take years to recover their security, their certainties. So today we want to use a newer tool, such as podcasts, to leave the audience of this theater and be able to reach women” with tracks that can be listened to on all free audio platforms, “so that they can understand which it’s the news, hearing the experiences of other women treated, healed and gaining confidence in the future”.

‘With other eyes’ is precisely the theme of the 2023 edition of Ieo for women. One can look at breast cancer in this way for several reasons: effective therapies also against metastases, constantly growing healing rates, tests that also identify the risk of cancer, treatments that respect life plans, including that of motherhood, list the experts in a day that had Angela Finocchiaro, Nicola Piovani and Mario Calabresi as special guests. “First of all there are new treatments – observes Veronesi – The ‘smart drugs’ have finally reached patients, children of the decoding of the genome, even for the most advanced forms. I am thinking of conjugated antibodies or immunotherapy”.

Furthermore, continues Veronesi, “prevention has improved, so much so that today we are able to identify even better the people at greater risk of getting sick. Until a few years ago we knew 5 or 6 genes that predisposed to the development of the disease; today we know at least the double and, if we discover the carriers, we can activate special surveillance programs. The improvement of treatments has also allowed us to deal even more extensively with the life of the woman beyond the disease. We have learned to preserve fertility whenever possible “, to ensure that women also take care of their sexuality and their physical and mental well-being in general, without considering them as superfluous elements. Changing the perspective of women, doctors and society in a positive way would already be a victory over cancer”.

The podcast ‘With other eyes’ was born from the collaboration between Ieo and Chora Media: five episodes with unpublished stories of Ieo patients, intertwined with the comments of their doctors and accompanied by the narrative voice of Monica Guerritore. “The implication of the change of perspective on breast cancer is very concrete – concludes Roberto Orecchia, scientific director of IEO – Just think of the discrimination that many women, even those who have recovered clinically, suffer at a social level: in the world of work or in accessing to services such as a mortgage or insurance.Just a few days ago the debate on the right to cancer oblivion has been rekindled in Italy, which provides for the restoration of the rights of the person before the disease and which in Italy is not yet law, like the is in many European countries. But the change of perspective is important above all for patients who are faced with a diagnosis of breast cancer today, who should live like a disease like many others: always serious, not always serious, less and less fatal” .