Cinieri (Aiom Foundation): “Acceptance of treatment is fundamental”

“Acceptance of treatment is essential not only for the outcome of the treatment, but also for the patient to be predisposed to undergo antitumor treatment. These treatments often last for years”. In this time “we must not allow a citizen to lose his normal activity”. This was stated by Saverio Cinieri, president of the Italian Association of Medical Oncology Foundation (Aiom), today in Milan, at the presentation of the national campaign ‘Breast cancer and quality of life’ dedicated to the disease in an advanced or metastatic stage’, carried out with the unconditional contribution of Gilead.

“We oncologists have learned to manage side effects by talking to patients – continues Cinieri – This, moreover, has led us to work with medical specialties with which we had very little relationship: I am thinking of endocrinologists, ophthalmologists, andrologists, to try to give the right therapy to the right patient” in the management of side effects. “These are therapies that fortunately often allow us to make the disease chronic – he underlines – therefore they must be administered for long periods of time. I was struck by the data that 69% of our patients lose their hair. It is a strong data, it is a data that can be partially remedied with the use of new medical devices, with an improvement on an effect that we oncologists believe, in adjuvant therapy, to be transitory and which we are relatively interested in, but it is wrong. It is a side effect that is dramatic for patients, much more dramatic than we medical oncologists and we male medical oncologists can understand. Also because – he concludes – men are more accustomed to losing their hair”.