This first Check Up is about the resurgence of cancer once the disease has been controlled by treatment. Do these terms used to talk about this problem mean the same thing?

Relapse, recurrence, recidivation. These words all mean the same thing in general terms: the disease is back.

However, there are differences between them when it comes to their clinical and medical meaning, which many people are not aware of.

Rita Fior uses zebrafish to do basic and translational research in cancer at the Champalimaud Foundation. A few years ago, having to deal with cancer in her family led her to design a test, based on her animal “model” – that would allow doctors to choose, among the available chemotherapeutic options, the best one for a given patient. How? Using the little zebrafish as “avatars”, as personalised “alter-egos” of the patients. Tumour cells from a patient are injected in the fish, generating the “avatars'' that will then be submitted to the treatment options available for that patient.

Interview with Oriol Parés and Bill Heald

Interview with Amjad Parvaiz

As a young man, Amjad Parvaiz, now 54, wanted to become a “big trauma surgeon”. So after graduating from university in his home city of Lahore, in Pakistan, he moved to South Africa to do his trauma surgery training there. While in South Africa, in 1995, he says, “one of my bosses took me aside and said to me: ‘if you want to do 21st century surgery, go and learn laparoscopy.

Interview with Paulo Fidalgo

Paulo Fidalgo, 66, says that he has “two loves” at the Champalimaud Foundation: gastroenterology and oncological risk assessment. So it does not come as a surprise that he is both a gastroenterologist in the Digestive Unit of the Champalimaud Clinical Centre and the head of the Risk Assessment and Early Diagnosis Programme at this Centre.

The Lancet Breast Cancer Commission, a worldwide multidisciplinary team of leaders and patient advocates, published a few days ago a Comment article in the medical journal The Lancet calling for urgent action to ensure treatment equity for women with breast cancer no matter who they are and where they live. Fátima Cardoso, internationally renowned Director of the Breast Unit at the Champalimaud Foundation, is one of the authors and representative of the larger work group.

Up until the discovery of the bacteria Helicobacter pylori, in 1982, diseases of the stomach were thought to be due to excess gastric acidity. Today, we know that the vast majority of stomach cancers are caused by a sustained infection by Helicobacter, and that eradicating it is enough to drastically reduce stomach cancer risk. However, it is less known that, even after the bacteria’s eradication, unhealthy diets can promote the development of gastric cancers. And what almost nobody knows is that one of the main risk factors for stomach cancer is… salt.

A diagnosis of breast cancer is not only an immediate life-threatening situation. It is also a psychological shock, whose repercussions can extend well past a patient’s recovery and jeopardise the leading of a normal life in the long run. However, not everyone reacts the same way to such a radical change of circumstances, which can imply invasive clinical interventions, radiotherapy and harsh chemotherapy regimens – and later strict surveillance to watch for recurrence.

This event, which was one of the first in the last 18 months to welcome back in-person participants as well as those online, had one question at its core: what do we need to know about digital health and patient-centred medicine?

What does physiotherapy have to do with cancer?

“Physiotherapy is an integral part of the cancer treatment and recovery plan: it promotes the patients’ life quality and overall sense of well-being by restoring movement, function and strength.” - Champalimaud Foundation Physiotherapy Team.