A cancer diagnosis was a death sentence a few years ago, but medicine is advancing and there are effective treatments and even preventive treatments for many types of cancer.
On the occasion of World Cancer Day yesterday, 4 February, we invited Prof. Ido Wolf, Head of the Oncology Department at Ichilov Hospital, to ask what we need to know about cancer today and what the future holds.
“Oncology is considered a particularly difficult and complex field, many cannot even pronounce the words “oncology” or “cancer”, the newspaper usually writes “a serious illness,” said Professor Wolf. - But, in the end, cancer is another disease, for me it’s not even the most difficult, there are worse things. I'm not sure that dementia is easier than cancer.
The most important thing to know about cancer, he says, is that there have been big changes in the field of cancer treatment in recent years. “If this was once a death sentence, now, if we look at Israeli statistics, the risk of getting cancer is decreasing, and the chances of recovery are increasing. So the news is good."
It is important to understand that the population is aging, and this also affects the incidence of cancer. “Cancer is a disease of old age, and the older the population, the more cases of cancer we see ... it is because of the increase in life expectancy that more cases of cancer appear,” explained Dr. Wolf, but emphasized that, despite this, the statistics in Israel , according to him "excellent".
Much of this improvement in cancer incidence is due to preventive medicine. Many Israelis are more aware of the importance of early detection of the disease and regularly undergo cancer screening tests such as mammograms or colonoscopies, so "cancer is detected earlier and treated more easily".
The path to recovery is sometimes difficult, but effective
Professor Wolff also gave a reassuring answer to the question of the price that cancer patients pay for such complex and side-effect treatments as chemotherapy.
“Firstly, if we find cancer earlier, we will need fewer procedures,” he explained, “and if we do need procedures, there are also big changes compared to the past. True, there is also chemotherapy, for example, in breast cancer, which causes hair loss and other side effects, but in other types of cancer, we can give much less harsh combinations of drugs. In some cases, we are moving from chemotherapy to different types of biological and immunological treatments, which are much more easily tolerated by patients, so we are definitely making progress.”
Professor Wolf stresses that even in the most severe cases, it is usually a difficult war that lasts for several months, “but we are fighting this war so that we can live to be 120 years old”: “The advantage of today's treatments is that the vast majority of patients we can cure them."
“So it’s true that there will be difficult months along the way, very difficult ones, but the optimistic side is that if I have a 35 or 40-year-old patient who has breast cancer, then in the past I knew that she would die from this cancer. , and today I know that after several difficult months, she will be able to live and be with her family, children and even grandchildren, ”he said.
In a few years, we will be able to detect cancer with a simple blood test.
One of the problems with cancers, especially those that are metastatic and widespread, is that they are sometimes difficult to detect, but significant progress has also been made in this area in recent years.
“Today, blood tests in this direction are already being developed that can detect really tiny elements of a tumor in the blood, ultra-sensitive tests that can detect even a minimal disease,” said Professor Wolf. “They are currently under research and I can assure you that in 3 years, 5 years we will be using these tests regularly. Moreover, I assume that we will test healthy people and already by a blood test we will be able to detect cancer.”
Today, there are only periodic screening tests that can be done for early detection of cancer, “but in a few years, each of us will come to the doctor and do a blood test and look for cancer at an early stage,” Professor Wolf explained.
He added that a study of this type of analysis has just begun in England, they plan to test several hundred thousand people there: “The study that has already begun will give results in two, three, four years, and it is likely that in a few years each of us will apply to the doctor every few years: "Give me a blood test and tell me if I have cancer."
Most cancers have no clear cause
The cause of cancer is not always found. “When someone gets cancer, they try to find out what is the cause, it is natural, but in many cases the cause of cancer depends on all sorts of events that have happened to us, all kinds.”
About 5 percent of cancers are hereditary—linked to genetics, 30 to 35 percent are environmental mutations such as sun exposure or smoking, and about 60 percent are other factors affecting a person's health, says Professor Wolf. they don't have a clear reason.
“When something happens by accident, another name for it is bad luck, and we get a big group of people saying: “But I behaved correctly, why did this happen?” And the answer lies in the fact that many biological processes behave in accordance with the mathematical model, and they do not care what we did or did not do,” said Professor Wolf, “this needs to be understood.”
This understanding, of course, should not hurt optimism, for, Wolf reiterates, the risk of getting cancer is reduced and the chance of being cured is increased, but this understanding is important in order to live with this diagnosis, which, despite optimism, is still frightening.