Elderly people, melanomas… How is cancer treatment progressing?

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There were around fifty of them braving the bad weather, and around ten by videoconference, to attend the 25^es ARKM medical meetingsassociation for the Manche Cancer Registry.

Organized at The City of the Sea, in Cherbourg (Manche), the Thursday November 21, 2024ce annual meeting is intended for general practitionersnurses, physiotherapists… to health professionals keen to obtain information and training from experts in cancerology (cancer studies and treatments), experts working in Manche and Calvados.

Many topics covered

During one afternoon, this year the discussion was on immunotherapy, melanoma, breast cancer, cancer care in the elderly, etc.

We choose subjects according to therapeutic progress, the specificity of certain cancers, the evolution of diagnoses… but also according to the interest shown by the participants in being trained and informed on particular pathologies, their diagnosis, treatments… We primarily address general practitioners, pharmacists and nurses.

Head of the Manche Cancer Registry, for one, an oncologist at the CHPC (Cotentin Public Hospital Center), for the other, they are also respectively president and secretary of the ARKM.

A way to take stock

Of the continuing training are also offered during these meetings, for example on hematology (specialized in blood diseases).

Among the central themes at these 2024 meetings, there was notably the management of melanomas, which, In Francerepresent 10% of skin cancers but in a worrying epidemiological situation since, according to the National Cancer Institute, “the number of new cases of skin cancer has more than tripled between 1990 and 2023 » (17,922 new cases in 2023 in mainland France).

Melanomas remain mortals (1,920 deaths in 2021) but have a good prognosis when treated early.

Many are taken care of by the dermatologist today, with a surgeon if necessary, and the oncologist intervenes for the more advanced stages for which we have immunotherapy and targeted therapies, on which we have made enormous progress and we hope to do more.

One of the other main themes was the management of cancer in an elderly person. In a department at aging populationwhere more than one in three Manchois will be 65 years old or over in 2070 according to INSEE, suffice to say that we are talking about public health.

20 registers in France, 4 in Normandy

For oncologists, the question is above all “being able to treat patients which can be done taking into account their age and without subcontracting or overcontracting, avoiding having too many toxicity. It’s necessary adapt treatmentswith the help of geriatricians, who today presented to us their way of working andconsider therapies ».

The sessions continued throughout the afternoon, at La Cité de la Mer, also focusing on what is being done on a national scale.

As a reminder, the ARKM was created in 1994 by doctors from La Manche, keen to set up a cancer registry, so as to better monitor cancers across the department.

There are 20 cancer registries in France, including four in Normandie : that of Manche, attached to the CHPC, that of Calvadosboth dedicated to all cancers, the register of digestive cancers and the regional register of hematologic malignancies (blood cancers).

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