Professor Patrick Bourguet, president of the Ille-et-Vilaine Cancer League, former director of the Eugène Marquis cancer center in Rennes and former president of Cancéropôle Grand Ouest was the guest at 7:45 a.m. on France Bleu Armorique to celebrate World Cancer Day.
In Brittany, cancer, how many new cases and how many deaths each year?
Today, in Brittany, we identify approximately 20,000 new cases per year and a little over 8,500 of the patients, unfortunately, die. It is the first cause of death in Brittany, in particular because of tobacco and alcohol.
And the bad news is that screenings are down while cancer detected at the first stage has a 95% chance of being cured…
Yes, absolutely and it is regrettable because Brittany was for a long time a region in which we were at the forefront in terms of adherence to these screening campaigns, particularly for breast cancer. We had reached about 75% of the population responding to screening. Today, there is a very clear drop which is probably partly due to the covid crisis. We went below 50%.
Are there still positive signals with medical advances in terms of treatment?
Yes quite . There have been tremendous advances in the field of radiotherapy in recent years. We manage to have extremely targeted irradiations by protecting the critical organs around the tumors with an efficiency that is sometimes equivalent to that of surgery. There are also great advances with immunotherapy. It is a treatment which does not consist in attacking and destroying the tumors but in restoring the immunity of the patient who himself, by his own immunity, can eliminate the cancerous lesions.
The right to be forgotten will go from 10 to 5 years, we learned this week. How is this a fundamental advance for former patients?
This is a problem that is really important. We arrived at a somewhat absurd situation where the quality of treatment management meant that a large number of patients were considered cured. You had patients to whom the doctor said that he was cured and when he went to take out a loan from the bank, they refused or charged appalling premiums. There was a dissociation between the medical discourse and the societal discourse, so it is very important for the sick, especially young people who have the right to have a normal life. And normal life also means being able to buy an apartment, a car, so it means having access to loans. Until now, it was relatively impossible.
What about donations to the League Against Cancer?
Surprisingly, they increased nationally during the lockdown. In 2021, we have higher donations than in 2020 and 2019. The League has three essential missions. The first is help for the sick and their families. We intervene in addition to basic treatments. We offer what we call support care: psychology, aesthetics, reflexology, etc. All these treatments are free. We also have a social component. In particular, we can respond to financial requests. The second component is support for national, but also regional research. The third aspect concerns screening.