Barcelona on the frontline in the cancer fight

The city of Barcelona will play a significant role in the prevention and promotion of awareness of breast cancer when it hosts the annual European Breast Cancer Conference this year. Breast cancer is among the leading killers of women around the world, and although mortality has begun to drop worldwide, and especially in Europe, there is still much progress that can be made.

The conference acts as a resource for the sharing of ideas and research and networking for people in the field of research and treatment of the disease.

By hosting the conference, Barcelona is playing its part in the progress that has been made, and ensuring that this progress does not lose its momentum.

The website for the European Breast Cancer Conference describes the event as “providing participants with an excellent platform for networking as well as perfect opportunity to gain further insight into cutting edge technology, latest healthcare solutions and services within the breast cancer field.”

The significant progress made ‘in the field’ is usually exhibited through the conference, and the upcoming event in Barcelona will be no exception.

Just recently a team of German and British doctors announced that after extensive research, they found that ‘beta-blockers’ or blood-pressure lowering tablets, helped reduce the spread of cancer because it simultaneously reduces stress, which prevents stress hormones from stimulating cancer cells.

Their findings are poignant, of the 466 cancer patients involved in the study they found that they had their risk of mortality from the disease reduced by 71%. These findings will be related in detail to medical professionals attending the conference and will facilitate the dissemination of better ideas and collective knowledge.  

Barcelona hosting the conference is not only important for the city’s image as a leader in research and development, and as a modern city on the frontline of new medicines and treatment (which it is), but also because Barcelona, like many European cities, has an ageing population, and is consequently seeing a dramatic increase in the number of cancer cases reported each year.

Throughout Europe, and indeed the rest of the developed world with aging populations, the occurrence of cancer has become something akin to a pandemic; there are around 300,000 new cases each year, and that number if climbing. The total number of people with cancer in Europe is now well over 4 million, or the entire population of Norway.

The majority of these people are the elderly, and breast cancer makes up a significant portion of cancer cases as well as deaths.

Mortality from cancer has been reduced though, progress is being made with new screening and diagnosis techniques, enabling doctors to catch the disease before it becomes serious enough to endanger the patient, the next front to fight on then is in the area of treatment.

That’s the whole point of the European Breast Cancer Conference, and that’s why it’s good for Barcelona to be hosting it.