ENNA – The integration between hospital and territory does not work in our healthcare system, especially with regard to prostate cancer. Often time is lost and waiting lists have to be faced and administrative procedures between ASPs, hospitals, clinics or affiliated centers and general practitioners increasingly “bureaucratized”: the diagnosed patients have to start the treatment path again once referred by the surgeon or by the specialist for a given therapy.
Added to this is the well-known lack of medical and nursing staff and the lack of homogeneity between provinces in terms of technological equipment and structures with inconvenience for those who have to move from one city to another. Problems and criticalities that have emerged for some time with great evidence also on the occasion of the pandemic which has gutted some of the main flaws of the NHS and which can now be partially resolved by the PDTA, the diagnostic therapeutic assistance path wanted by the Regional Health Department to facilitate the user and offer faster and more qualified services, thanks to the multidisciplinarity guaranteed ab initio.
Oncologists, urologists, radio-oncologists, pathologists, geneticists, nuclear doctors, molecular biologists, psycho-oncologists gathered at the Federico II Hotel in Enna on the occasion of the third appointment “Prostate cancer today … between correct diagnostic-therapeutic pathways and innovation” promoted by the coordinator of the Sicilian oncological network, Vincenzo Adamo and by the referent of the Network for prostate cancer Nicolò Purse and organized by Motus Animi, with the aim of also deepening the diagnostic and therapeutic innovations of the pathology.
It risks one in 10 Sicilians
“One Sicilian out of 10 has the theoretical risk of having a diagnosis of this type in the course of his life – explained Adamo – from birth to 84 years with peaks between 70 and 74. In Italy in 2021 we count 7200 deaths, with a survival of 5 years of 91% and 564 thousand with this diagnosis; in 2020 there are 36 thousand new diagnoses thanks to early screening which consists of PSA dosage, digital rectal examination, prostate ultrasound and biopsy under ultrasound guidance “.
The possible diagnosis, in Sicily
We also took stock of the Diagnostic Therapeutic Assistance Path wanted by the Sicilian Region to offer a multidisciplinary and high-level clinical procedure to patients: “In our Region the recent approval of the Diagnostic Therapeutic Assistance Path – highlighted Borsellino – the result of the work of coordination of the Sicilian oncological network, has led to the construction of a web-based platform, called Prosithe, which will soon be active and will allow all centers to access the form by recording the pre-established PDTA indicators; the Network of Specialist Centers ensures patients care according to the principles of quality, dignity, safety, multidisciplinarity, solidarity and training”.