3 Feb 2025
Cancer Awareness Week
Worldwide
Tuesday 4th February, is World Cancer Awareness day, an annual event sharing people’s experiences, highlighting symptoms to encourage early diagnosis and hopefully giving hope for new treatments and possibly cures.
Coinciding with this, it will also be the UK’s oesophageal cancer awareness month. OOSO have contributed to this by supporting a national charity Action Against Heartburn with their messaging and offering some of our own patient experiences. The awareness week starts off this coming Monday 3rd February, so look out for it in the press and on social media.
One of the main objectives this year is simply to highlight key symptoms and encouraging people to go to their GPs for a check up. Some of the wording you might see in the media will be along these lines;
“The most common symptoms of oesophageal cancer can include difficulty swallowing (dysphagia), heartburn or indigestion that doesn’t go away, loss of appetite and weight loss, pain or discomfort in your stomach, chest or back, feeling or being sick, a persistent cough, hoarseness, tiredness and shortness of breath.
There are many other conditions that can cause these symptoms, most of which are much more common than oesophageal cancer. But if you have symptoms that are persistent or unusual for you, you should see your doctor.”
One of our own Oxford Surgeons Professor Sheraz Markar has recently been quoted in the press regarding seeking early diagnosis for oesophageal cancer. The article published in the Daily Telegraph on 15th January described measures to increase survival rates for a group of cancers, one of them being oesophageal cancer. Professor Markar encouraged individuals who have gastric reflux symptoms to seek medical attention earlier, especially in younger age groups where diagnoses are rising.
The article is a paid online article and can be found at:
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