ROMA (ITALPRESS) – Immunotherapy, target therapies, personalization of care and attention to the quality of life of the patient are the elements that characterize today oncology, the medical specialty that deals with the study, diagnosis and treatment of tumors. Compared to only a few years ago, progress is enormous and encouraging: research continues to improve the possibility of early diagnosis and care, transforming in many cases cancer into a chronic disease with which to live; the challenge is to make these achievements accessible to all, reducing inequalities and guaranteeing increasingly fair, effective and person-centered treatment paths.
“The commitment to communication in oncology stems from clinical practice. I realized that the quality of communications affects deeply the health of people and the efficiency of treatment provided: it can also influence therapeutic adherence, treatments, the relationship of trust between oncologist and patient, the ability of the patient himself to face the path; we doctors are often prepared on the technical level, but sometimes a little less on how to transcribe information. ‘Communicating the cancer, medicine and health’ is a course of improvement that I hold at the Polytechnic University of Marche: the goal is to train health professionals and communication in the field of medical, health and scientific communication, in view of the moment in which they will be in contact with patients and citizens,’ said Rossana Berardi, Professor of Oncology and Director of Specialization School in Medical Oncology at the University of Politecnica.
Among the mistakes made by doctors in talking about tumors, he explains, “the first is to think that communication is a moment, when in reality it is a process that must take into account a variable as important as time; the information should not be given all immediately and all together, without checking how much the person can bear them. Another mistake is sometimes very technical language, another is to avoid emotions: we are not always trained and careful in dealing with the patient with the emotions that the disease can give. Very often we do not realize that communication is made primarily of active listening: this means seeking contact with the person, which is crucial not so much in the quality of care we perform as in the perception of what we do”.
What is needed to those who dwell on the topic, especially in the case of media and social, is “responsibility: we speak of a theme that inevitably touches people’s lives, so it is essential to use the right language and avoid sensationalism, misleading titles or excessive promises; equally important is to rely on accredited sources and distinguish between preliminary data and consolidated data. There are also taboo words, which patients ask us to use less and less, like miracle, defeat and war: these can certainly be powerful from a journalistic point of view, but they are misleading and painful for people facing that kind of disease.”.
From the oncological point of view, according to Berardi, the most promising research strand “is that of personalized medicine: it means to recognize that diseases are all different and patients are all different, but also to rely on the characteristics of individuals and on the genetic-molecular ones of the tumor. Instruments such as the Molecolar Tumor Board allow you to go to study in detail the identity card of the tumor, in order to identify increasingly targeted and specific therapies: it is therefore new drugs with biomolecular target, immunotherapy, drug-conjugated antibodies. These are a bit the new frontiers of oncology: however the research strand that could be more promising, but in reality it is a little less studied, is prevention. On patients operating for colon cancer a precision exercise, therefore with the monitoring of a personal trainer and activity three times a week with a very cut-out program, can reduce the relapse of disease over 30%: on the psychological aspect instead we do not yet have data regarding the impact on the evolutionaryness of the disease, but we still have information on how much they can affect adherence to care or the presence of predominant side effects.”.
The elected president of the Aiom concludes by highlighting how “I expect in the short-half period a further improvement of the therapies available, increasingly personalized and able to treat patients in specific conditions: in a medium-long period I expect to transform the pathology into a condition as chronic and manageable as possible; my dream remains however to have more on prevention and finally be able to use the word heal”.
– Photos from Top Medicine –
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