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Background: Cancer Registries (CRs) remain the gold standard for providing official epidemiological estimations. However, due to CRs' partial population coverage, hospitalization records might represent a valuable tool to provide additional information on cancer occurrence and expenditures at national/regional level for research purposes. The Epidemiology of Cancer in Italy (EPIKIT) study group has been built up, within the framework of the Civic Observers for Health and Environment: Initiative of Responsibility and Sustainability (COHEIRS) project under the auspices of the Europe for Citizens Program, to assess population health indicators. Objective: To assess the burden of all cancers in Italian children and adults. Methods: We analyzed National Hospitalization Records from 2001 to 2011. Based on social security numbers (anonymously treated), we have excluded from our analyses all re-hospitalizations of the same patients (n = 1,878,109) over the entire 11-year period in order to minimize the overlap between prevalent and incident cancer cases. To be more conservative, only data concerning the last five years (2007-2011) have been taken into account for final analyses. The absolute number of hospitalizations and standardized hospitalization rates (SHR) were computed for each Italian province by sex and age-groups (0-19 and 20-49). Results: The EPIKIT database included a total of 4,113,169 first hospital admissions due to main diagnoses of all tumors. The annual average number of hospital admissions due to cancer in Italy has been computed in 2362 and 43,141 hospitalizations in pediatric patients (0-19 years old) and adults (20-49 years old), respectively. Women accounted for the majority of cancer cases in adults aged 20-49. As expected, the big city of Rome presented the highest average annual number of pediatric cancers (n = 392, SHR = 9.9), followed by Naples (n = 378; SHR = 9.9) and Milan (n = 212; SHR = 7.3). However, when we look at SHR, minor cities (i.e., Imperia, Isernia and others) presented values >10 per 100,000, with only 10 or 20 cases per year. Similar figures are shown also for young adults aged 20-49. Conclusions: In addition to SHR, the absolute number of incident cancer cases represents a crucial piece of information for planning adequate healthcare services and assessing social alarm phenomena. Our findings call for specific risk assessment programs at local level (involving CRs) to search for causal relations with environmental exposures.

The profession of the doctor has been defined up to the present day with slogans such as: science, conscience, competence, professionalism, humanity. With the 2000s, the role of the doctor must also be involved in areas such as: systemic vision, ethics, responsibility, environmental protection, global health. Like all men, even the doctor in his profession must take into account his ecological footprint, also from the perspective of responsibility towards the ecosphere and future generations. The commitment in the field of diagnosis and therapy must expand to new fields of action: from prevention to appropriateness, from the fight against pollution to the mitigation of climate change. It is an indispensable and urgent challenge. A commitment that is first of all a problem of ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A workshop endorsed by the Italian Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation--Emilia Romagna Section--held in Piacenza in May 2011, gave the opportunity to discuss the emerging role of Preventive Cardiology in the modern era. From the new documents recently published by the European and Italian Scientific Associations, the barriers in their implementation, and the contribution of the health care providers, physicians, nurses, both in primary and secondary prevention were discussed. The local initiatives of cardiac prevention in different areas were presented and compared. A new project of secondary prevention in the follow-up and management of patients with dilated cardiomyopathy and heart failure promoted by the Emilia Romagna Region Health Authority was presented.