Advances in cancer prevention and treatment reported at this week’s premier European congress for specialists in gynaecological cancers show that care is being more effectively tailored to the needs of individual women, so that survival can be improved without the cost of added complications and reduced quality of life.

Speaking at this week’s 16th International Meeting of the European Society of Gynaecological Oncology (ESGO) in Belgrade, Serbia, the Society’s new President, Professor Ate van der Zee, from the Netherlands, stressed the value of this new approach:

“Our latest treatments take account of the fact that every woman is different, and it isn’t enough just to try to improve life expectancy. We need to try to minimise the effects of treatment on a woman’s working and family life, and to take more account of whether she still wants to have children.

“We have also learned how important it is to concentrate our expertise in specialist centres, especially when we are treating the rarer gynaecological cancers, so that women have access to the most up to date knowledge and expertise that doctors specifically trained in gynaecological cancer can provide.

“By building this expertise we can also ensure that new discoveries made in laboratories across Europe are translated into clinical treatments as efficiently as possible as we develop ever more refined therapies tailored to the unique genetic and other characteristics of our patients.”