FOUR OUT of every five women diagnosed with breast cancer today and the same numbers of men diagnosed with prostate cancer will still be alive in five years, a conference in Dublin heard at the weekend.
Dr Séamus O’Reilly, consultant medical oncologist at Cork University Hospital who chaired the Innovation in Cancer Care conference at the Royal College of Physicians, Dublin, said survivor clinics will have to be set up in each of the State’s eight designated cancer centres where these survivors can attend for aftercare assessment before they are discharged back to their GP.
He said because the majority of people who are diagnosed with breast cancer will die from other diseases – most likely cardiovascular disease – it was important these survivor clinics would monitor cholesterol levels and promote smoking cessation programmes. It was also important they monitor the long-term effects of treatment which could include early menopause and osteoporosis.
The clinics would allow patients who had been through treatment to give feedback to doctors on their experiences so as to improve things for new patients, he said.
More than 110,000 people in Ireland have survived cancer for at least five years and that figure is set to increase significantly in the coming decade, Dr O’Reilly said, as the latest survival data from the National Cancer Registry relates to 2004, which is before the designated cancer centres were established.
Improvements in survival rates are being attributed to increased screening, better surgery and multidisciplinary care.