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This article adresses the question of communication between patient and physician. Specifically we investigated the therapeutic implications of the patient-physician relation, especially when carring for cancer patients. The objective of "personalized medicine" is replaced with that of "precision medicine" or "personalized therapy" in which the emphasis on disease and therapy crowds out the patient's lived experience of the disease. In the second part, the discussion shifts to the question of language, taking both everyday and specialized language into account as forms of speech reflecting social and cultural attitudes to medicine and disease. Specifically, we will look at some metaphorical representations of cancer.

This descriptive pilot study aimed at assessing the impact of art contemplation on patients' adaptation to hospital confinement and the factors influencing this effect.Artistic photographs were hung on the walls of the ward. Two hundred and thirty-nine (239) consecutive non-bed-constrained patients who stayed in the ward for at least 3 days (original number enrolled in study were males/females: 148/96, age 19-89 years; 5 patients declined to fill out questionnaires) participated in the study.Patients compiled two questionnaires exploring physical, psychologic, and social/family well-being, relative/friend support, and ward functioning. The self-perceived effect of photographs on the hospitalization distress was assessed. Clinical conditions were evaluated with the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status.Ninety-seven (97) (40.6%) patients belonged to ECOG stage 0, 101 (42.3%) to stage 1, 37 (15.5%) to stage 2, and 4 (1.7%) to stage 3. Two hundred and thirty-nine patients (239) (92%) looked at and 232 (85.5%) repeatedly contemplated the photographs. For most patients (72%), photographs made their stay in the hospital more pleasant. The ECOG performance status and self-perceived anxiety were the only independent modulators of the probability to obtain a restorative effect from the photographs.Embellishing clinical spaces with photographs has a positive effect on the adaptation to hospitalization in most patients. This effect is influenced by the patients' clinical status and self-perceived anxiety.

Il presente lavoro prende in considerazione la relazione medico paziente specialmente nelle situazioni caratterizzate da patologie severe e con andamento ingravescente. In tali contesti la competenza tecnospecialistica del medico, solitamente rivolta al disease, deve aprirsi al dialogo con il paziente che ha bisogno di essere compreso nel suo vissuto di malattia (illness). La narrazione della sua esperienza alimeta la fiducia verso il curante e la compliance verso i trattamenti talora invasivi e difficili da accettare.

This work deals with the relationship which are established between patient and the doctor, especially in clinical situations characterized by serious pathologies with uncertain outcomes. Both those who treat and those who are treated create "disease stories", but each one pursues different goal and often uses not mutually intelligible langiages, thus increasing the patient's feeling of sulitude and abandonment. Despite the sucess pf biomedicine and evidenced-based medicine, aiming to cure the disease, it is remarked the little attention to how the disease is perceived may lead patients to narrate their illness experience. Somewhere else, through different ways of communication, this narrative is welcomed and shared.

Paura e fobia sono termini spesso usati come sinonimi e molteplici sono i motivi che portano a questa sorta di identificazione, a partire dallo stesso significato di fobia ( phobos), traducibile come “paura che genera la fuga”. Tuttavia è bene precisare i contorni e le caratteristiche proprie di tali termini, in considerazione della loro origine, intensità e direzione.