Many still die from “curable” testicular cancer
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The decline in deaths due to testicular cancer seen in the US and Canada over the last three decades has not reached all countries in the Americas and deaths from this relatively rare cancer remain unacceptably high in most Latin American countries, according to a report.
Testicular cancer is “one of the most curable (cancers) if adequate treatment is adopted,” Dr. Paola Bertuccio from Milan’s Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche “Mario Negri” noted in an email to Reuters Health.
“Discrepancies in testicular cancer mortality between Latin and North American countries,” Bertuccio said, “essentially reflect an inadequate adoption of modern platinum-based chemotherapy regimens, which have substantially reduced mortality from testicular cancer in developed areas of the world since the early 1970s.”
Bertuccio and colleagues analyzed trends in mortality for this cancer in 10 selected countries of the Americas over a 23-year period (1980 to 2003).
In the early 1980s, the highest testicular cancer death rates were observed in Chile and Argentina, at 3.6 and 1.7 deaths per 100,000 men between the ages of 20 to 44 years, respectively. The corresponding death rates in Canada and the United States were 0.6 and 0.7 deaths per 100,000 men in the same age group.
By 2001-2003, testicular cancer death rates had fallen to 0.2 and 0.4 per 100,000 men between 22 and 44 years old in Canada and the US, respectively.
But in Argentina, Chile, and Mexico in 2001-2003, testicular cancer death rates remained “exceedingly high” at 1.6, 2.2, and 1.2 per 100,000 men, respectively.
Clearly, Bertuccio said, “the US and Canada benefit from an earlier and more effective introduction of new therapeutic approaches.”
“Urgent intervention, Bertuccio and colleagues conclude,“is required to provide treatment (essentially modern integrated platinum-based chemotherapy) for this largely curable neoplasm in young men.”
SOURCE: Cancer, February 15, 2007.
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