A majority of Austrians are aware of the importance of regular check-ups for early cancer detection, but younger people in particular could be better motivated to do so electronically. This emerges from an Imas survey commissioned by the pharmaceutical company MSD Austria.
However, 23 percent of those surveyed aged 16 and over said that smoking did not pose such a risk, a further 15 percent chose the answer that it depends on the dose, and five percent said “no answer”. Around half of the people surveyed said that they did not smoke, and 27 percent of this group said that there was no increased risk of cancer due to smoking.
Julia Fuchs, cancer expert at the pharmaceutical company MSD, described this result as worrying and alarming. Linz Primar Bernd Lamprecht, head of the Pulmonary Medicine Clinic at Kepler University Hospital, recalled that the smoking rate in Austria is above the OECD average and cigarette consumption is the main factor for the around 5,000 new cases of lung cancer every year.
“In women, lung cancer is the second most common form of the disease after breast cancer and in men after prostate cancer. And it has an unfavorable prognosis because early detection is not possible.” For Lamprecht, there are two approaches to reducing the numbers: on the one hand, motivating young people not to start using this risk factor in the first place, and on the one hand, supporting people in giving up smoking. On the other hand, it is also important to improve the early detection rate. Such a program is still missing in Austria, but Lamprecht referred to the results of the so-called Nelson study, which shows the effect of preventive CT examinations on smokers aged 50 and over. After ten years, lung cancer mortality among those examined was 24 percent lower than in a comparison group without screening.
SMS reminder
According to Paul Eiselsberg from Imas, a key way to encourage people to have a preventive examination would be to get them to do so with a reminder in the form of an SMS or email: “It is important for the population to have such an anchor .”
Two fifths of the younger respondents also expressed the desire for an invitation letter with the option of making an appointment.
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Source: Nachrichten
