Dear colleagues, for the fourth year in a row, the Bulgarian Breast and Cervical Cancer Association is organizing its anual course.
This year the course will be held on October 12th and 13th in the meeting room on the 8th floor of the „Dr. Shterev“ Medical Complex. October 12th will be dedicated to cervical cancer, as the main topic will be vaccine prevention and HPV screening, and October 13th will be dedicated to breast cancer, as the main topic we will be the path of the breast cancer patient in Bulgaria.
With us will be our guests from the Department of Imaging of the Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria – Dr. Birgit Amort and Dr. Silke Haushamer, who will conduct the practical workshop on biopsies of lesions of breast under ultrasound control.
You can find more about the program in the link below.
You can register for both days together or for each of the days separately, and the registration is as follows:
Registration for October 12 (cervical cancer day) – BGN 100
Registration for October 13 (breast cancer day) – BGN 100
Registration for the two days – BGN 180
If you are a resident, you can benefit from a 50% discount on registration fees.
Your registration will only be considered complete after completing the registration form below and paying the entry fee.
Deadline for payment of the amount for the registration fee – 29.09.2024.
Places for the course are limited to 40 places for each day!
We will be happy to discuss your clinical cases together at the specially held round table. You can send the clinical cases in word or power point format, including clinical data, information from imaging studies and follow-up treatment and 2-3 questions that you would like to discuss in our round table to the following address: bbcancerassociation@gmail.com.
2023 was the second year of our Association existence and we are happy to share that it was very successful! We have completed so many tasks and so many more to come! See more like in the video below!
LIFE app is a tool for patient’s empowerment, where women (and men) with breast cancer can be an active paricipants in their treatment.
LIFE is developed as mobile or desktop app and currently can be used on Android phones.
Users have access to:
validated medical information for thieir disease;
information for nutrition and phisical activity during and after cancer treatment;
recomendations for excersise after surgery;
psycological support and information;
recommendations for follow up exams.
Patients can report and track:
the regular intake of the prescribed medicines
physical activity and excersise after surgery
any side effect of the therapy
quality of life and psycological status
Users can collect all their medical documentation on a mobile phone wherewer they go. All documents related to the diagnosis, treatment and follow-up of the patient can be stored as pictures in different sections.
All information in the app is specifically created for the Bulgarian breast cancer patients by our consultants:
Patients and doctors in the app can improve their communication by giving access to the doctors of summary of their patients drug intake and quaility of life during treatment.
Register today in the LIFE and soon will receive a call from our asistant – Veneta Terziiska. She will provide you with all the support you may need to use the app. Stay connected with us for better user experience! Become a part of the LIFE community.
Dear colleagues, for the third year in a row, the Bulgarian Breast Cancer and Gynecological Cancer Association is organizing its eponymous course.
After the incredible success of the course in 2022 (you can see it here), we have prepared an even more amazing program this year!
This year the course will be held on September 23 and 24 in the meeting room on the 8th floor of the „Dr. Shterev“ Medical Complex. Your registration will only be considered complete after completing the registration form below and paying the entry fee.
The course includes a hands-on workshop on biopsy of breast lesions, a hands-on workshop on reading pap smear results and an HPV test. What is new in our program are multidisciplinary discussions, in which all participants are involved, discussing a clinical case – as it would happen at an oncocommittee!
We have provided experts in various fields with whom we will discuss the cases you have sent us.
The deadline for submitting clinical cases has passed! There is still room for clinical cases related to cervical cancer. You can send the clinical cases in word or power point format, including clinical data, imaging and follow-up information and 2-3 questions you would like to discuss in our round table to the following address: bbcancerassociation@gmail.com
This year, September 23rd is dedicated to breast cancer, and September 24th to cervical cancer. The registration fee for each individual day is BGN 50.00, and for both days together it is BGN 70.00, paid to the company’s account (IBAN: BG88BPBI7940109130030). This year, places for the course are limited to 30 places for each of the days
Those of you who send a clinical case that is accepted for discussion during the course can benefit from a 50% reduction in the registration fee – BGN 35.00.
According to data from Bulgarian National Cancer Registry (BNCR), breast cancer is the most common oncological disease in Bulgaria. Since 2012 every year in Bulgaria have been diagnosed between 3500 and 4000 new cases. In the last years number of the registered cases is decreasing. From one side this is due to lack of data in the Registry from many hospitals, but mostly it is because the Bulgarian population is decreasing, which was seen in the last caunt of Population in 2021. Despite of the high number of oncological cases in the recent years and the demographic crisis there is also a problem with suboptimal or missing registration.
Bulgaria is the only country on the Balkans which has a National Cancer Registry.
Therefore if the registration of oncological diseases in Bulgaria stops there will be no epidemiological data not only from Bulgaria, but on the Balkans as whole.
BNCR is sending data every year to the international agency for research on cancer https://gco.iarc.fr/ and the European information system https://ecis.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ . From those sources it is obvious, that Bulgaria is not from the countries with the highest burden of breast cancer, but is on one of the last places in Europe according to the 5 year survival rate. Recent publications are also confirming those trends.
Trends in breast cancer by country and region. Five-year net survival rates in all adults (2000–2014). Source: CONCORD-3 study. Data is not available for Greece, Hungary, and Luxemburg. Dafni U, Tsourti Z, Alatsathianos I. Breast Cancer Statistics in the European Union: Incidence and Survival across European Countries. Breast Care (Basel). 2019 Dec;14(6):344-353. doi: 10.1159/000503219. Epub 2019 Oct 8. PMID: 31933579; PMCID: PMC6940474.
In Bulgaria, there is no national screening program for the early diagnosis of breast cancer, which means that the initiative to examine the breast for the purpose of early diagnosis is in the hands of the patient, or it is the so-called opportunistic screening.
The National Health Insurance Fund covers, with a GP referral, an echomammographic (ultrasound) examination of the breast every 2 years for patients between 30 and 50 years old without complaints, and for women between 50 and 69 years old, again without complaints – a mammographic examination of the breast, also at every 2 years. For women with chest complaints, the GP can order an echomammography as needed at any time.
Bulgaria is one of the countries with the lowest survival rate from oncological diseases, including breast cancer, in the European Union. The latest data are from the CONCORD 3 study, which included patients diagnosed up to 2014. In Bulgaria, the 5-year age-related survival from breast cancer is 78.3%, which is about 8-10% lower than the 5-year survival in countries such as Belgium and Sweden. In Belgium, a national population-based breast cancer screening program was introduced in 2001 and participation in the program has been shown to reduce the risk of breast cancer mortality by 50% compared to patients screened opportunistically. In Sweden, national population-based screening for breast cancer was introduced in 1997 and covers nearly 80% of women within the country’s borders. This results in up to a 41% reduction in the risk of death from breast cancer for women participating in screening compared to those not participating. In Bulgaria, more recent data on the mortality and survival of patients with breast cancer are missing due to the currently non-functioning National Cancer Registry.
According to the current recommendations of the European Commission, all women between the ages of 45 and 74 are subject to organized screening. At the age of 45 to 49, mammography should be performed every 2 or 3 years. Between the ages of 50 and 69, a mammogram should be carried out every 2 years, and between the ages of 70 and 74 again – a mammogram every 3 years. These recommendations take into account the effectiveness of screening, the potential for overdiagnosis of breast cancer, and the potential harms of screening.
Mammography should be performed on both breasts in 2 projections, that is, a total of at least 4 images are required. These total of 4 images deliver a radiation dose of between 3 and 5 mGy to the glandular tissue. The risk of developing breast cancer from this radiation dose is many times smaller than the benefit of detecting breast cancer with a well-conducted, high-quality mammogram. A dose of 3mGy is obtained from the Earth’s natural radiation background in 6 weeks. This means that if we live for 6 weeks, it is as if we had a screening mammogram.
The American Cancer Society in its large study found that the risk of death from breast cancer as a result of the dose received at screening (in America, screening mammography is recommended annually from 40 to 55 years and every two years from 55 to 74 years) is 10.7 per 1,000,000 women, and the benefit per breast cancer death averted from screening was 497 per 100,000 women, or a benefit-risk ratio of 47:1. in favor of screening mammography.
