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Monday, January 2, the former American tennis champion Martina Navratilova announced to suffer from a double cancer of the throat and the breast, via the site of the WTA. A fight that she announces she wants to fight until victory.
At 66, the former world number 1 in tennis, Martina Navratilova, winner of 59 Grand Slam titles is about to fight the fight of her life. Monday, on site WTA, the champion announced that she had double cancer: throat and breast, both diagnosed in November.
“I will fight with everything I have”
This is not the first time that the tenniswoman has had to deal with the disease, since she had already overcome breast cancer in 2010. Twelve years later, last November, the sportswoman discovered an enlarged lymph node. lymphatic in the neck which leads her to do some tests. During these, doctors diagnose throat cancer and a second breast cancer, both in stage 1. The announcement is “a serious double whammysupports the athlete, but still reversible”. “The type of cancer is HPV (papillomavirus) and it responds very well to treatment.”can we read in a press release.
“I hope for a favorable outcome. It will stink for a while, but I will fight with everything I have”supports the champion to reassure her fans.
According to the WTA, the American, born in Czechoslovakia will begin treatment next week in New York.
The papillomavirus, a cancer that can also affect the ENT sphere
Very often associated with cancer of the cervix, the human papillomavirus can also affect the ENT sphere, as is the case for the tennis champion today. According to the Gustave Roussy website, these HPV-related oropharyngeal cancers (about 50% of cases) are “in marked increase in many Western countries and represent a clinical and biological entity different from other ENT cancers traditionally linked to alcohol-tobacco intoxication”. The site also recalls that oral HPV infection is a sexually transmitted infection. Nearly 1% of the population has an oral HPV16 infection, the genotype most frequently associated with HPV-related ENT cancers. Fortunately, throat cancer due to HPV has a good prognosis for treatment.
For Eric Solary, oncologist and member of the board of directors of the ARC Foundation joined by Doctissimo, the announcement of Martina Navratilova is above all an opportunity to recall that there is to date a growing number of ENT cancers induced by the papillomavirus. , also in France, which does not only affect smokers.
“And the opportunity to remember above all that in men as in women, there is a vaccination that exists, which is to be done from childhood and which is not done enough in France. It is urgent to motivate families to get this vaccination against a cancer that can affect increasingly young people”.
In France, more than 6,000 HPV-related cancers are diagnosed in France each year. Recommended in France for several years for young girls by the High Authority for Health, vaccination against HPV is now also recommended for boys.