Abstract
In recent decades, the number of patients with a history of cancer in Italy has increased from about 2 million in 2006 to over 3 million in 2016. In 2020, 4.5 million cancer patients are expected, as a result of improved screening programs, therapeutic advances and population aging.
Oncologists are called to face new clinical needs consequent to the chronicity of the metastatic disease, side effects and diagnosis of early recurrence or second cancers.
In this contest, it is necessary a paradigm shift in the culture of cancer survivorship care, whereby we abandon a common, general, approach to all cancer survivors in favor of the application of our epidemiologic knowledge and the developing risk assessment tools to tailor follow-up and recommendations to each individual cancer survivor.
Cancer and survivorship care, infact, should both move to personalized precision approaches, as it is done in other chronic diseases. Personalizing follow-up will improve the medical and psychosocial care for each individual cancer patients and will help reduce the stigma of disease that still persists in many cultures.
The categorization of cancer patients represents an opportunity to achieve this goal.
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Tralongo, P., Caspani, F., Tralongo, A.C., Surbone, A. (2021). Patients Categorization. In: Russo, A., Peeters, M., Incorvaia, L., Rolfo, C. (eds) Practical Medical Oncology Textbook. UNIPA Springer Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56051-5_29
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