File photo.
Treatments increasingly tailored to individual cases will help boost cancer patients’ longevity, ensure a better quality of life and reduce recurrence of cancers in remission, Dr Thanos Dimopoulos, a professor of blood and tumor diseases and former rector of the University of Athens, told Kathimerini in an interview.
But a series of factors, plus the fact that diagnosis of the disease is now easier, mean that the number of cases will keep increasing, he cautions.
“An individualized approach [to therapy] is key to balancing the benefits and likely side effects,” of drug treatments, he says.
Dimopoulos calls attention to longer life expectancy, lifestyle changes that promote unhealthy eating habits, rising obesity, minimal to no physical activity and the ever present, if declining, smoking habit, as factors boosting the number of cancer cases, along with rising pollution.