Academic Hospital General Surgery Specialist Dr. Fikret Düşünceli reminded that cancer diagnosis, treatment and regular control processes have been disrupted for the last year due to the Covid - 19 epidemic, and said that patients who are diagnosed with surgery should not postpone their operations for too long.
Pointing out that the number of applications to polyclinics decreased during the pandemic in all cancers, Dr. Fikret Düşünceli said, “We have left behind a year in the pandemic and being late one year is an alarm for all cancers. In this process, patients who needed to come for a routine examination did not come, which means that we may see some cancers at an advanced stage in the coming days, ”he said.
Cancer diagnosis seems to have decreased in statistics
Stating that, due to the Covid-19 outbreak last year, many people were afraid to have their routine checks and examinations due to the concern that they would be infected. Thoughtful said:
“The patients who needed to come for routine examination did not come, which means we will see some cancers in an advanced stage in the coming days. It will give us such a side effect. For example, in a patient who needed mammography last year, maybe a year ago, we would detect the tumor, we would have performed the surgery.
When these patients apply to the hospital this year, maybe we will do the surgery in stage 2. In some people, we could not perform procedures such as colonoscopy and endoscopy, we could not take a biopsy, and therefore no cancer diagnosis could be made. This is why cancer diagnoses appear less in some statistics from last year. But this is an illusion, the cancer has not decreased. ”In the first place, patients cannot plan their operations under pandemic conditions and“ How long can we postpone the surgery and it is ideal zamwe will operate at the moment? " Stating that the answer to the question is sought, Dr. Fikret Düşünceli continued his words as follows:
“I have been diagnosed with cancer, let me wait, and to say that I will have surgery a year later is not a reasonable method. Since we did not know what was happening at first, it was said that one or two months should pass, let's see ahead, but this period should not exceed 2-3 months. This is the case for all cancers.
On the other hand, the group we performed the most operations in 2020 was cancer patients. Because some patients did not have the chance to postpone their surgery for much. I can say that the number of cancer surgeries increased proportionally last year. Previously, 100 out of 15 surgeries were cancer surgeries, but last year 60 out of 20 surgeries were cancer cases. "
Success is increasing in treatment with new drugs
Mentioning that the success rates in cancer treatment have increased, Dr. He also gave the following information about thoughtful, up-to-date treatment approaches:
As technology develops, we can detect diseases earlier, and we get more successful results in operations that you could not perform in the past or types of cancer that we could not treat. This means their life span, life expectancy uzamprovides his ace.
With smart drugs, you are moving towards the target, that is, drugs that only target cancerous tissue and that will make controlled release that will remain in your body for a certain period of time. For example, these drugs are effective in your body for 3 months, with a total of 30 milligrams released once a day, without damaging other tissues.
Another benefit of the new drugs is that they enable us to bring patients who were previously inoperable at first to a stage where they could be operated. Especially in breast cancer, we had to remove the whole breast when we were at a certain stage, but nowadays, with the drugs given, this tumor is reduced and only a part of the breast is removed. * The most important rule that still applies to all tumors is that the earlier they are detected, the more successful they are treated. As medicine progressed, the surgeries we performed became more minimal. As our weapons get stronger, we will be more optimistic in situations where we speak more pessimistic today. Perhaps we will make patients who cannot be operated on as candidates for surgery. We will be able to treat some cases with only drugs without any surgery.
Do not verify lab results online
Explaining that patients generally focus on negative information while searching for disease information on the internet, Dr. Stating that thoughtful, bad-negative words are more remembered, “Some patients who have laboratory tests can interpret a low blood value as“ I have cancer ”with the information they obtained from the internet before they consult a doctor. Sometimes the opposite happens and people who ignore the symptoms and test results underestimate the results by looking at the results on the internet. If there is any doubt about a laboratory test, then a doctor must be consulted, ”he warned.
Remember the 5 most common symptoms
- Weakness,
- Losing weight involuntarily despite normal eating patterns,
- Bleeding other than the menstrual cycle in women,
- Neglected stomach and intestinal system bleeding,
- Change in defecation habits.
Be the first to comment