Cancer in young adults – the new pandemic?

an interview with Dr. Elitsa Becheva-Kraichir

During their studies, future doctors learn some basic rules about cancer, which each of them, regardless of their specialty, will inevitably encounter professionally and, unfortunately, often personally. The first thing medics understand is that this is not a single disease, but is one of the largest groups of diseases in modern man. What these diseases, also called malignant neoplasms or neoplasms, have in common is the abnormal and uncontrolled growth of various cells in the body that have the potential to invade (penetrate and take over) the structures around them and spread to distant parts of the body.

In recent decades we have learned that cancer has a genetic basis – it is linked to various errors in the genetic information of the cell. Doctors know that this usually happens as a person’s body ages, under the influence of harmful external factors, over a long period of time, when our defence mechanisms become “tired”.

Then, spontaneously, a series of somatic DNA mutations occur in a cell and it transforms into a cancer cell. Because of this, the doctor expects to diagnose cancer at an advanced age of the patient – after the sixth or seventh decade. Medical textbooks teach that cancer can be detected in younger people, but very rarely (in up to 5-10% of cases), and then the specialist must suspect an inherited predisposition to cancer due to germline (inherited) mutations. These basic principles of cancer development are the basis of the mass screening and prevention measures offered by health systems around the world, with the commonality of starting at a specific but more advanced age (e.g. after the age of 50 (an exception is made for hereditary forms).

The full article is available here in Bulgarian.