Paris (AFP)

"Taking the cancer by the throat" is the motto of a new campaign launched on Monday to raise awareness of the symptoms and risk factors of head and neck cancers, relatively common and serious but unknown.

These cancers of the upper respiratory and digestive tracts (sinus, tongue, gums, throat ...) "can develop in more than 30 zones in the head and neck, and usually start from the cells of the high respiratory mucosa ", explains Institut Curie.

With about 14,000 new cases and 5,000 deaths a year, this family of diseases represents the 4th leading cause of cancer deaths in France, but it is much less known than others of the general public.

This ignorance, added to the fact that the first symptoms are often commonplace, results in screening too late, synonymous with loss of luck for patients.

Supported at an early stage, the survival rate is 80% to 90%, but this rate "collapses beyond certain tumor sizes", explained to AFP Maria Lesnik, surgeon in the service of ENT of the Institut Curie.

Moreover, the bigger the tumor, the more mutilating the surgery, and the more functional and esthetic sequelae will be important, says the association of patients Corasso, which supports these "broken mouths".

The campaign launched by Corasso and the French Society of Head and Neck Surgery (SFCCF) wants to make known the signs that must alert: difficulty or pain when swallowing, white or red spots in the mouth (sores), sore throat, hoarseness swollen ganglion in the neck, clogged nostril or nosebleed.

The difficulty is that these symptoms "of disconcerting banality" are "felt by all the French, several times a year, and can be likened to a cold, a rhino-pharyngitis or a benign viral episode", recognizes Dr. Maria Lesnik.

But if "you have any of these symptoms for three weeks" or more, "talk to your doctor", which will send you to a specialist in the upper aero-digestive tract, says the poster of the campaign, also supported by the Institut Curie and the Merck laboratory.

These posters with the slogan "1 for 3", which summarizes this message, will be visible in anti-cancer centers and addictology, pharmacies and general practitioners and dentists.

Meanwhile, several 45-second films directed by Frederic Petitjean, who was himself affected by this disease, will be broadcast this week on television, on social networks and in theaters.

In one of them, a Paris Opera dancer duo discusses the risk factors: tobacco, which causes 85% of head and neck cancers, alcohol, but also HPV papillomavirus, which can cause tumors of the tonsils or the base of the tongue, or occupational exposure to toxic dust or fumes.

© 2019 AFP