Articles
Precision care: supporting our patients starts with asking them what they want and need
Two weeks after receiving a brain tumour diagnosis, Martin was copied into an email from one of his healthcare team telling his GP that Martin was “understandably devastated by his diagnosis”. The words came as a shock. “My healthcare team…
On being a woman in oncology: in their own words
Over the past two decades, Cancer World has had the privilege of publishing profiles of many women who have been leading efforts to improve the quality of cancer care. Coming from all corners of Europe, working in all areas of…
Chemobrain: it’s real, it’s troublesome and it deserves more attention
Fiona Henderson was part way through her psychology degree when she received her breast cancer diagnosis. Right after treatments finished, she returned to her studies – initially without a problem. “Three or four months later, I really struggled. I was…
Beating the odds in colorectal cancer
Stefan Gijssels beat the odds in colorectal cancer. Diagnosed with a cancer of the colon in 2015, a laparoscopic surgery intended to remove what was thought to be a locally contained tumour revealed something much nastier. The cancer had pierced…
Lung cancer screening: 2022 could be a turning point for Europe
If cancer screening policies were driven purely by mortality rates and curability, then lung cancer would long have topped the priority list for population screening programmes. Accounting for almost one in every four cancer deaths in men and almost one…
Tackling drug resistance: how our commensal bacteria can hinder or help
Response to therapeutics can differ widely from patient to patient, with some gaining highly significant survival benefits from a therapy that in others elicits no response at all. Patients who respond initially often develop resistance or relapse over time. Not…
Evolution of the doctor-patient relationship: from ancient times to the personalised medicine era
The nature of the doctor–patient relationship has gone through various phases in history, based on the changing role of the physician in the community, as well as progress in medicine and increased choices of care, together with better-informed patients. Broadly…
Informal carers play a key role in cancer care: they need and deserve more support
What is it worth to patients to have someone they can rely on to provide emotional support and talk things through, help them get to and from appointments, remind them about what medicines to take and when, help them eat…
Liver cancer: how Europe can halt the rising death toll
When the cancer community in Europe talks of neglected cancers it usually means relatively rare or uncommon types, of which there are many. But conspicuous in the list are two digestive cancers that are both deadly, not uncommon and increasing…
Drugs shortages: ‘We parents of children with cancer are too exhausted to protest’
When it all started, Ioana Oprea did not have a spare moment to come to terms with what had happened ‒ to truly take in the fact that her son Teodor had a brain tumour. In the autumn of 2020,…