How to get back to a normal life after having had breast cancer? The answers of Dr Séverine Alran, head of the Gynecology and Senology department at Paris Saint-Joseph hospital.
More than 80% of women with breast cancer recover today. Still, for many, rebuilding after such an ordeal is not easy. To achieve this, “a number of associations such as Siel Blue Where Rosamouv offer coaching to get into physical activity”, first advise the Dr Séverine Alran, Head of Gynecology and Senology at Paris Saint-Joseph Hospital.
About the couple and sexuality, “cancer can take away, when a body changes it’s not easy. We have to talk about it, and for that, we can get help from psycho-oncologists or gynecologists”, continues Severine Alran.
Regarding the fear of recurrence, “It is around less than 10% over the next ten years. So in 90% of cases, nothing will happen. You have to try to think like when you go on a trip. When you take the car “, we don’t ask ourselves the question of whether we are going to have an accident. And if there is a recurrence, there are appropriate treatments”, reassures the breast surgeon. “For young women, it is possible to envisage a maternity project in the two or three years following the treatments”, she says again (for more information, see the video below).
With 60,000 new cases every year, breast cancer ranks first among incident cancers in women, well ahead of colorectal cancer and lung cancer. Breast cancer screening (recommended every 2 years for women aged 50 to 74, editor’s note) is all the more interesting as the 5-year survival of affected patients is improving more and more: it has gone from 80% for patients diagnosed between 1989 and 1993 to 87% for those diagnosed between 2005 and 2010. As a result, the mortality rate linked to breast cancer decreases from year to year.
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