2023-11-11 17:07:00
the essentials After extensive medical and paramedical monitoring, patients in remission find themselves alone, in a moment of great fragility. However, support can be prescribed.
The overall post-cancer care pathway must provide support to patients in remission, once treatments and supportive care have stopped. It has existed since last January… but has only helped 20 people, while Gers has nearly 1,100 patients who might benefit from it. The ARS and the Gers Cancer League want to make this device known, a factor in well-being, but also in better post-treatment health.
Individualized support
“It is support for patients who have had cancer, through three specialties: psychological support, dietary advice and adapted physical activity,” explains Didier Pier Florentin, director of ARS 32, which finances the device. To have access to it, all you need is a medical prescription and having finished your active treatment for less than a year. Modular, individualized, the course involves neither out-of-pocket costs nor advance payments from the patient.
Problem: general practitioners, oncologists and pediatricians in Gers, if they have received a letter from the ARS and the League once morest cancer to inform them of this course, do not always think to report its existence. “We see that things are having trouble getting started,” notes Chantal Monnet, public health nurse at the ARS, in charge of health prevention. The ARS is well aware that practitioners already receive a lot of information to communicate to patients. “We are also considering a letter sent by the CPAM to patients,” says the director of the structure.
“Our objective is joint work between the care professionals of the League and the doctors,” adds Nadia Benoit, the president of the Gers Cancer League. We must ultimately verify that this post-treatment monitoring makes it possible to reduce following-effects and recurrences.”
Sword of Damocles
Because stopping treatment does not mean that everything is over. “Patients are closely monitored during treatment,” explains Chantal Monnet. But remission is a sword of Damocles over their daily lives. Psychologically, we don’t come out of this illness all at once.” The single-cup bra, the installation of an artificial anus, the way others look at a child returning to school… “We’re talking regarding real suffering,” confides Didier Pier Florentin. And these patients find themselves faced with a void, an absence of support which can even provoke suicidal impulses.
To avoid this loneliness, and the phenomena of depression that sometimes result from it, ARS and League intend to push the fires so that the use of this follow-up care becomes widespread in the department.
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