PhysioUpdate News 23rd April 2024

Breast cancer survival improving but many patients being 'systematically left behind': Commission

Physical inactivity is one of the modifiable risk factors for breast cancer that is highlighted in a major paper on the condition that is published today (16 April) in The Lancet.

The paper, written by an international and interdisciplinary group that forms a new Lancet Commission, points out that breast cancer is now the world’s most common cancer. By the at the end of 2020, 7.8 million women were alive who had received a diagnosis during the previous five years.

In the same year, 685,000 women died from the disease. Despite significant improvements in research, treatment, and survival, gross inequities persist, and many patients are being systematically left behind. This is a ‘global blunder’, according to the Lancet Commission.

In high income countries, as many as one breast cancer in four could be prevented by modifying the risk factors associated with breast cancer. Bold policy changes that minimise people’s exposure to modifiable risk factors – such as physical inactivity, alcohol consumption and being overweight – are vital to bring down cancer rates, it  suggests.

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Sports physiotherapist Vittoria Marin will speak at international conference on Football Medicine

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With a 22-year research career, Gita Ramdharry is set to speak about the 'good, bad and ugly' sides

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