On day 3 of EMUC24, urologist Dr. Christian Fankhauser (CH) delivered a practical lecture on “Guarding men’s health: Strategies for preventing penile cancer”, during the plenary session dedicated to testicular and penile cancer.
According to Dr. Fankhauser, there are factors that are non-modifiable such as race and ethnicity, age, low socio-economic status, and education. But there are modifiable factors, and he called these “the 7 sins”. These include smoking, human papillomavirus, human immunodeficiency virus, phimosis (plus hygiene), penile inflammation, lichen sclerosus, and ultraviolet A phototherapy. Of these modifiable factors, Dr. Fankhauser placed extra emphasis on smoking cessation and made the comment that there are very expensive drugs for patients to gain a year of life but what about encouraging them to quit smoking. “Standard of care should be smoking cessation”.
Dr. Fankhauser cited his paper from 2022 on ‘Preoperative smoking cessation programmes in patients undergoing intermediate to high-risk surgery: a randomised, single-blinded, controlled, superiority trial”. The hypothesis was that a preoperative smoking cessation programme improved outcomes in smokers undergoing surgery. Secondary outcomes included the length of hospital stay, cost of care, quality of life, smoking abstinence, and reduction in nicotine consumption. He shared statistics from the Cochrane Library that smoking cessation pre-surgery reduced complications by 40%, and costs by approximately 10%.
To conclude, Dr. Fankhauser said “Think about screening and modifying important risk factors, encourage smoking cessation so you have fitter patients on the table, educate on safer sex, and treat lichen sclerosus/precursor lesion. Modifying the risk factors can prevent a lot of things, not just penile cancer.”
You can watch a webcast recording of Dr. Fankhauser’s full presentation on the EMUC24 Resource Centre, as well as the other lectures presented during the testicular and penile cancer plenary session.
