Seville, (EFE).- Clinical trials on breast cancer have experienced a rise in Andalusia, where 6,000 cases of this disease are diagnosed a year, and 80% of them are focused on metastatic disease.
This was revealed this Thursday by the experts participating in the XV International Symposium of the GEICAM group for breast cancer research in Seville, in which some 700 specialists address the news about this disease, which currently has 23,000 patients. in the community.
Dr. Manuel Ruiz-Borrego, head of the Breast Cancer Unit at the Virgen del Rocío Hospital in Seville, has indicated that the volume of trials has increased and that “it is the tool that has allowed progress” in treatments against this disease.
“If it weren’t for them, we would continue giving chemotherapy to all the patients,” said the doctor, who stressed that “there was a time when it was seen as very strange, but then both the number of trials and the number of patients participating have increased in them”.
In said center there are currently 50 open trials on breast cancer and in Andalusia more than a hundred, mostly focused on metastasis because “it is a gap in pathology that needs more progress” and because in cases of disease localized are “more complex” to perform.
The voluntarism of doctors
Ruiz-Borrego has specified that during the past year 175 patients participated in these trials in the Virgen del Rocío and more than 500 throughout the community, which has been developing several centers for its realization.
Among them, the oncologist has cited the University Hospital of Malaga, the Virgen Macarena in Seville, which has experienced “an impressive rise”, the Reina Sofía in Córdoba, also with an “important” volume, and the Clinical Hospital of Granada.
He has indicated that Andalusia has the disadvantage of being a “very large” community, which adds difficulties of an operational nature and means, but an attempt has been made to distribute it “as homogeneously as possible” throughout the territory to facilitate access for the patients.
Ruiz-Borrego explained that the community has different structures and platforms available through the Andalusian Society of Medical Oncology that “allow an oncologist to access, find out where there is a trial of that pathology and refer the patient”.
He recalled that the success of clinical trials “has depended on the voluntarism of doctors” and regretted that public administrations “are not aware of the value they have” and therefore there is no official structure to dedicate themselves to them.
Less toxic treatments
In the same sense, Dr. Natalia Chavarría, an oncologist at the Hospital de Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz), has spoken, who has stressed that, “although there is still a long way to go, the trials are the opportunity to use drugs that are already known to be to have results but that cannot yet be used in clinical practice”.
“You can’t move forward if you don’t invest in research”, claimed the doctor, who has highlighted, on the other hand, the importance of habits such as physical exercise for women who have overcome breast cancer and has assessed the effectiveness of prevention programs and personalization of treatments.
For his part, Dr. Fernando Henao, an oncologist at the Virgen Macarena University Hospital in Seville, has detailed that these treatments are “increasingly targeted and less toxic, many of them taken orally to prevent side effects and avoid hospital visits.” .
It has indicated that the survival rate stands at almost 80% of diagnosed women, something that is especially due to early detection programs that are carried out between 50 and 70 years of age, since the highest incidence is recorded among 55 and 65. EFE