ROMA (ITALPRESS) – Oncological prevention concerns all, women and men: taking care of their health means first of all adopting lifestyles that reduce risk factors, do not smoke, avoid alcohol, maintain a proper weight, do physical activity, follow a balanced diet and protect yourself from excessive exposure to the sun; this adds participation in oncological screening to identify some tumor forms in the initial stage, when the treatment possibilities are greater. For women, screening for breast cancer and uterine cervix, for women and men, for cancer of the rectum colon, according to age and indications provided by health programs: prevention also passes by knowledge of family history and comparison with the doctor, especially when there are specific risk factors. Preventing does not mean living in the fear of the disease, but choosing to take care of one’s health before problems appear or in any case face them sooner and better.
“Prevention is a fundamental instrument of social protection: beyond the health field also concerns the environmental dimension, natural disasters, road safety. Everything is prevention: undoubtedly, however, health prevention, not necessarily oncological but also metabolic diseases, diabetes, cardiopathy, is fundamental. I do more than primary prevention, i.e. to give the right information and sensitize: we know that four out of ten tumors can be prevented with proper nutrition, physical activity, absence of smoke. Smoking is not the first thing: cigarette smoke in the Western world is the first cause of avoidable death, but we do the opposite; in Italy there are 12 million smokers and 7 million former smokers who are ready to resume.” Marco Alloisio, president of the Italian League for the fight against tumors (Lilt) in Milan and Monza-Brianza, interviewed for Top Medicine, TV format of the news agency Italpress.
Secondary prevention, says Alloisio, is instead “unless of early diagnosis: it comes into play if we cannot intervene with the primary. We provide the tools to prevent, so take tumors when they are small: a tumor at the first stage is much more healable. The fundamental screenings, as well as life saving, are those for the breast or mammography, those for the rectum colonoscopy and the search for occult blood in the feces, the one for the uterine cervix or the Pap test or the molecular test of the search of the papilloma”.
In Italy, he continues, “things go a little better despite an incidence that increases slightly, to the extent that the population becomes older and we have more precise technological tools to see also tumors of a few millimeters. Finally, we have released, for lung cancer, low-dose spiral tac: this is really a very important conquest, because with few radiations you can find very small lung tumors and you can have an improvement of survival for lung cancer greater than 20%, which is really so much.”.
For the future, says Alloisio, “as there is a medicine of precision there must be a prevention of precision. Age, presence or absence of smoke and socio-demographic data are not enough: you have to go deeper with familiarity, genetic tests and all those alterations that can make you understand first if a person is likely to suffer from cancer. Now the causes we know almost all of them, but the factors that prevent it are less known: we are also looking for this.”.
The last reflection is dedicated to the activity of Lilt, which “has as an objective the prevention, to be done more and more widespread in the national territory: it means also attention to the cancer patient and his family, assistance and finally also tertiary prevention, which concerns those who from the tumor are healed. These are many, but a person never heals completely from the tumor: there is always a mental and psychological component, at the moment in Italy we talk about 4 million people”.
– Photos from Top Medicine –
(ITALPRESS).
