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Society

Survival rate of inoperable lung cancer patients raises to 80% with a pioneering technique developed in Catalonia

March 6, 2013 08:37 PM | CNA / Laia Ros

The Catalan Institute of Oncology (ICO) has introduced a world pioneering technique which allows four out of five patients who cannot undergo surgery to survive the illness. This technique causes less after-effects than the traditional radiotherapy. Furthermore, statistics show that with the regular treatment, two thirds of these patients die. However, Ferran Gadea, the Head of the Radiotherapy and Oncology Service, says that the best option to cure a lung cancer is still to undergo the operation when possible.

Society

The Mediterranean diet reduces by 6% the risk of developing breast cancer

February 14, 2013 03:57 PM | CNA / Elise Griset

Researchers from the Catalan Institute of Oncology have led the largest international study on breast cance4r and nutrition. The 8-year study has been based on 335,062 women between 35 and 70 years old. It has involved 23 centres in 10 European countries and it has been published in the ‘International Journal of Cancer’. The study concludes that the Mediterranean diet can reduce the risk of breast cancer by 6% among women in general and 7% in the case of post-menopausal patients.

Society

Catalan centres are at the core of the billion-euro graphene and human brain research projects funded by the European Commission

January 30, 2013 10:17 PM | CNA / Gaspar Pericay Coll

Through its FET-Flagship programme, the European Commission is allocating €1 billion to each of the two main research projects in Europe. The first one is a project to explore the properties of graphene, a new material deriving from graphite that might revolutionise industry as silicon did a few decades ago. The second one will simulate a human brain in order to understand how it exactly works. The Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology is one of the nine leading institutes coordinating the graphene project, in which 623 research groups from 32 different countries will participate. Furthermore, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center will take care of the calculations at a molecular level in the Human Brain Project.

Society

The Catalan Oncology Institute gets maximum international distinction for its fight against tobacco

May 21, 2012 11:04 PM | CNA / Adrià Attardi

The centre received the ‘Gold Level Award’ from the Global Network for Tobacco Health Care Services, thanks to its fight against the effects of smoking. The jury emphasised the training given to both hospital workers and patients in order to give up smoking and the achievement of a strict non-smoking area in this health centre’s facilities. Only ten hospitals around the world have this distinction, among them another Catalan institution: Sant Joan de Déu Hospital in Manresa, in Central Catalonia.