The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
People with breast cancer ‘left behind’
Many people with breast cancer are being “systematically left behind” due to inaction on inequities and hidden suffering, experts have said.
A global report suggests people with the condition are continuing to face glaring inequalities and significant adversity, much of which remains unacknowledged by wider society and policymakers.
The Lancet Breast Cancer Commission highlights a need for better communication between medical staff and patients, and stresses the importance of early detection.
It also highlights the need for improved awareness of breast cancer risk factors, with almost one in four cases of the disease estimated to be preventable.
Breast cancer is now the world’s most common cancer, and at the end of 2020 7.8 million women were alive having been diagnosed in the previous five years.
In the same year, 685,000 women died from it.
Estimates suggest global breast cancer incidence will rise from 2.3m new cases in 2020 to more than 3m by 2040, and 1m deaths from the disease per year are projected by 2040.
Although breast cancer is the most common cancer, gaps in knowledge continue to prevent effective action, the experts suggest.
For example, the number of people living with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) – cancer that has spread to other organs – is not known, hampering the provision of treatment.
Even though 20-30% of patients with early breast cancer experience relapse, relapse is not typically recorded by most national cancer registries and therefore the number of patients living with MBC is not known.
The Lancet Commission’s lead author, Professor Charlotte Coles, department of oncology, Cambridge University, said: “Recent improvements in breast cancer survival represent a great success.
“However, we can’t ignore how many patients are being systematically left behind.
“Our commission builds on previous evidence, presents new data and integrates patient voices to shed light on a large unseen burden. We hope that by highlighting these inequities and hidden costs and suffering in breast cancer, they can be better recognised and addressed by healthcare professionals and policymakers in partnership with patients and the public.”
The commission also warns of the social and emotional impacts of breast cancer on patients.
Additionally, the commission carried out a pilot study which analysed the financial costs of breast cancer to individual people and to the wider economy.
The study – which limited its scope to the UK to assess these impacts in a country where healthcare is free at the point of use – found many people experienced a fall in income, job loss and difficulty paying for travel costs to treatment following a diagnosis of breast cancer.
The new report argues these costs remain largely unacknowledged by policymakers and society, and it also warns of the social and emotional impacts of breast cancer on patients, many of which, the commission argues, are not adequately measured.