Undoubtedly, oncology has evolved impressively in recent years, leading to a substantial improvement in patients’ life expectancy. Major advances have been seen in diagnostic techniques, surgery (increasingly conservative), and radiotherapy (more precise and with fewer side effects). Medical therapies, administered both at an early stage and at a more advanced stage, have also helped to reduce recurrences and have increased the survival time even of patients with distant metastases, leading to the chronicity of cancer for many years.
Attention to managing comorbidities must therefore be considered an integral part of care to improve quality of life.
About 50 percent of the causes of death in patients with solid tumors are related to infections. These are mainly bacterial infections, followed by fungal and viral ones. Infections are capable of drastically worsening the prognosis of patients, causing interruption of cancer treatments, altering the tumor microenvironment (TME) by increasing the proportion of pro-inflammatory cells, creating dysbiosis of the gut microbiota following the use of antibiotics, antimycotics and antivirals, and overall, negatively impacting the quality of life of patients.

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