“Since last year with the pandemic that we live in the world, cancer has been relegated for several reasons: because patients are afraid to go to their treatments, patients with suspicion have not gone for an assessment and for the reconversion of hospitals, this generated lack of control in the care ”, says Adela Ayensa, director of Fundación Salvati, dedicated to the care of cancer patients.
February 4 marks the World Cancer Day, a date that aims to mobilize awareness actions about the disease. Today, according to the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), up to 3.7 million lives could be saved a year with prevention strategies, early detection and adequate treatments, however, after going through a pandemic of global dimensions this point has been relegated.
According to Adela, one of the most important missions of this date is to again demand timely detection and, with everything and protection measures, that patients return to hospitals for their treatments, since “cancer does not stay at home and we do not have a vaccine, so it is very important to reinforce this message ”. In this sense, he said that civil organizations are giving guidance to people to know where to go “we are in contact with some medical authorities and they share information about new sites, routes or resources for care, the point is that people don’t give up ”.
Since the beginning of the Covid-19 contingency, according to the specialized consultancy IQVIA Primary Intelligence, medical oncologists in Mexico report a 47% decrease in medical consultations. Also the medical journal JAMA Network Open indicated that weekly in northern states in the United States, diagnoses fell in six types of cancers with significant decreases in all types.
This is confirmed by Dr. Samuel Rivera Rivera, former president of the Mexican Society of Oncology (SMeO), who assures in an interview that although there is still much to know about how we have fared with this cancer pandemic, the doctors who treat him have been able to identify delays in a general way, “both in care and in diagnosis. Although it was thought that this was going to be temporary, in the end it seems that there will be various negative effects ”.
He added that as doctors they have had to adapt the circumstances for care, “one of the most important points is that the treatments in these diseases must be continuous and without pauses, even the visit to the institutions in some cases is imminent to be able to refer them, Around this situation there has been slowness in the approach, although the institutional efforts have been important, the pandemic changed everything “.
The same magazine JAMA Network Open, mentions in a study that the impact of the time elapsed from diagnosis to the start of treatment is crucial to allocate resources efficiently, especially when unforeseen limitations arise. In addition, evidence was recorded that shorter time in care was associated with lower mortality, for the cancers studied, suggesting an indirect association between postponement of treatment and mortality that may not be apparent for years.
Current outlook in Mexico
Dr. Rivera Rivera explains that in recent years breast cancer in women and prostate cancer in men continue to be the ones with the highest incidence, but the second with the greatest impact on fatality, where the most progress has been made is in the most timely care and incidence of cervical cancer; however, he said that probably what we will see in the near future are diseases with a more pronounced advance in more advanced clinical stages, “that may be an effect of the pandemic.”
Regarding patients with cancer and who have also been infected with the new virus, he said that despite the fact that some neoplasms have been reported, especially skin, with changes in cancer, it has not been conclusively demonstrated that the disease is modify in terms of its evolution due to Covid-19, “in general it runs the same as in any healthy person, but in certain treatments it is necessary to be more emphatic in the care because their physical condition is diminished, as well as their functional capacity , this could bring greater complications, in these cases the measures are to influence the increase of defenses in the body “.
The specialist concluded that “this is a scary disease, even one would like to avoid it in thought but only thinking that it may exist and with good information is that we will be able to detect it. Thinking about cancer is important ”.
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