Mexico City /
Every 24 hours, 21 women die from breast cancer. There are 7,973 deaths per year and the first cause of mortality due to malignant neoplasms in Mexico.
“We are seeing an increase in mortality rate important in Mexico,” explained Juan Enrique Bargalló Rocha, head of the department of Breast Tumor Services at the National Institute of Cancerology (INCAN).
Why can this type of cancer develop?
The bad eating habitssuch as eating foods with low nutritional content and high calories, a sedentary lifestyle, suffering from obesity and having addictions such as smokingwithout excluding genetic inheritance, are some factors why women increasingly develop this type of cancer.
But there are causes that, even science cannot explain why the disease is not only concentrated in women over 50 years old, but also in young people between 20 and 30 years old.
“The National Institute of Public Health has different studies where there is a 30 percent in which we do not explain why, it is not necessarily because it is genetically different, there is simply no answer right now as to why we have a younger population.
“Indeed, if we could say that our median is 50 years old, we increasingly see that around 20 percent are under 40 years old and there may be up to 9 percent under 35 years old,” added Bargalló Rocha.
In Mexico, around 25 thousand new cases of breast cancer are diagnosed each year. The mammography It is the study indicated to carry out this detection among women between 40 and 69 years old. Outside that age range, the result is no longer reliable because the breast tissue is dense. But this clinical logic endorsed by experts leaves a sector of young people adrift.
“As if before it was a disease that, when the woman was in a very mature stage, no, in old age, and today we see young people from the age of 30, no, with breast cancer,” said Valentina Gallart, Medical Director. from AstraZeneca Mexico.
It happened with Gabriela, who had not turned 30 when a injury of 0.5 millimeters and, thanks to the fact that she mobilized and discarded comments like “find yourself a man,” that is how she agreed to timely treatment.
“I was able to have conservative surgery and radiation, many radiations, 45 radiations and five years of hormone therapy, it is a medication that is taken for five years after surgery, and chemo and radio, which although it seems easy to take a little pill, I think is one of the more complicated parts because it is a chemically induced menopause and being menopausal at 30 is not funny, it has many consequences.”
Mastographs
In Mexico There is a whole discussion about the number of mammograms to serve a population of more than 20 million women between 40 and 69 years old.
There are only, according to INEGI, 1,281 devices and not all of them are calibrated. And to this is added a record of 1,043 oncology specialists registered in the public health sector, where Mexico City concentrates 31 percent, that is, 321 and in Quintana Roo only 0.5 percent, that is, five experts
For INCAN, it is necessary that, regardless of the stage, there is access to treatment.
“There are tumors that may be in a slightly more advanced stage, with biological characteristics very particular, that if you give the right treatment, at the right time, you could have responses as favorable as if you had had the earliest stage.
“A proper diagnosis is necessary, knowing the biology of the tumor and having access to treatment,” said Bargalló Rocha.
But access has been limited in some patientsSusana, 42, has struggled with chemotherapy. “They tell me that there are a lot of people, and suddenly they are not getting as much supplies.
In this process I had a reprogramming of the chemotherapy because there was no medication that they had to give me. Delaying treatment can be serious”
The truth is that there is an effort not only to diagnose but also to reconstruct breastsand even access to a nipple-areolar micropigmentation technique among survivors, both in the IMSS and the ISSSTE.
HCM
