CYPRUS’ BREAST cancer medical oncology treatments are on par with treatments offered in the US and other European countries, a leading medical oncologist said yesterday.
This was the conclusion Dr Maria Theodoulou-Haber said she had drawn from her brief visit to Cyprus this week.
“Where work still needs to be done is on breast cancer education,” she said.
Haber, a licensed physician and practitioner in medical oncology at the Memorial Sloan – Kettering Cancer Centre, in New York, USA, was speaking to reporters at an informal gathering at the Cyprus breast cancer forum’s headquarters in Nicosia.
“More women need to be made aware of the risk for developing breast cancer, being educated and empowered.”
The doctor said early screening was also vital as it could not only save lives but also result in less invasive treatment, with 40 a good age to start.
Where women had a family history of breast cancer, then screening should start 10 years earlier. “For instance if a woman’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer at 45 then screening should start at 35 and so on,” she said.
Europa Donna president and DISY deputy Stella Kyriakides said in terms of clinical oncology, Cypriot women were in very capable hands.
Nevertheless, she said, the forum was going to advocate for Multidisciplinary Breast Centres in line with last October’s European parliament resolution on breast cancer.
“As a European country, we want implemented what Europe says we should have… We might not need 10 centres but we could have one,” Kyriakides said.
The resolution stipulates that every patient with breast cancer should be treated at such a centre, set up according to EU-approved guidelines.
Each Breast Centre must perform a minimum 150 primary breast cancer operations per year, with surgeons specialising in benign and malignant diseases of the breast performing at least 50 operations each. “The surgeons must perform only breast surgery,” Kyriakides said.
In Cyprus last year, 406 new cases of breast cancer were operated on by 62 surgeons, a figure Europa Donna deems unacceptable.
Kyriakides said: “A mastectomy is psychologically a very difficult surgery for women, and is perhaps the easiest for a surgeon. But now there are new techniques and it’s not just about performing a mastectomy. It’s about the need for expertise on breast cancer, to remove the tumour, to perform breast conservation, to ensure there is no residual cancer, to perform reconstruction.”
Kyriakides said treatment at such Breast Centres would undoubtedly improve survival rates and quality of life.
“It’s important that all experts who deal with the breast come under the one unit so that women have a place to go and receive the most information about their treatment, what type of cancer they have, what type of surgery they need to undergo… We are demanding the implementation of this resolution in Cyprus,” she said.
The resolution demands the provision of such specialised units across all EU member states by 2016.
During yesterday’s gathering Kyriakides also announced the breast cancer forum’s launch of its ‘Bosom Buddies’ programme. The programme has been set up to help cover the costs for women who cannot afford to pay for silicone prostheses following a partial or full mastectomy.
The Europa Donna president said women with a medical card were eligible for the programme. All they had to do was to purchase the prosthesis and bring the receipt to the forum’s offices, she said.
The total cost of the programme for 2007 is expected to amount to £10,000.
