Cancer mortality is lower in EU countries ... - 20minutos.es

class=”text”> hospital waiting room Doce de Octubre. (Pepe Caballero / FILE)

cancer mortality is lower in countries of the European Union over health spending, especially in cases of breast cancer, according to a study presented Saturday at the European Congress of Cancer 2013 , held in Amsterdam.

class=”imp”> The study authors point out that this relationship “is most evident” for breast cancer According to the authors of the study, which was also published on Saturday in the specialized scientific journal Annals of oncology , wealth and greater health spending is associated both with an increased incidence of cancer as a lower mortality from this disease.

One of the study authors, the Spanish Felipe Ades, Oncologist Breast European Adjuvant Studies Team, in Belgium, said that the more money goes to health is less than the number of deaths after the diagnosis of a cancer, and that this relationship “is most evident” in the case of breast cancer.

The authors have also observed, as Ades, that despite all efforts to standardize public health policies, there is a “significant difference” between health spending and the incidence of cancer the 27 EU states, it is even clearer between Eastern and Western European countries.

countries that spend less than 1,500 per year per capita in healthcare, such as Romania, Poland and Hungary, around 60% of patients dies after diagnosis of cancer, while those who spend between 1,800 and 2,200 euros (Portugal, Spain, United Kingdom), the percentage drops to 40-50%, and above 3,000 euros (France, Belgium, Germany) mortality is below 40%.

The study does not analyze the reasons for the increased incidence of cancer in Western European countries, but suggests that this is partly due to the existence of a greater number of screening programs to detect more cancers in its earliest stages and therapeutically affordable and also respond to the increased availability of effective treatments in these countries.

About the

breast cancer , the authors note that the association between wealth and greater health spending and the incidence of this disease is even greater than in other cancers, a fact related with a higher incidence breast cancer in Western countries.