4th Latin American Symposium on GastroIntestinal Oncology

Latin American Symposium on Gastrointestinal Oncology (SLAGO) 2013

Dr Christian Caglevic - Fundación Arturo López Pérez, Santiago, Chile

We spoke about several topics; one of the most important topics we talked about during the session of gastric cancer was chemotherapy, especially perioperative chemotherapy, that means before and after surgery. Now, we have a better, improved… in our patients better overall survival. We have improved another schedule here in Chile with some of the new agents. That means we have improved a lot during the last years in our patient population in gastric cancer.

Can you discuss the use of chemotherapy?

We have used several schedules of chemotherapy, different types. We started using the same chemotherapy that was used during the trial, the MAGIC trial, which is doxorubicin, cisplatin and fluorouracil but after now we are using the same schedule that that means docetaxel, cisplatin and capecitabine and our results have been very well during the last times.

What is the prevalence of gastric cancer in South America?

In South America we have a lot of gastric cancers, especially on the Pacific coast, that means Chile, Peru and Ecuador and Colombia also and probably Panama. That disease is very important for us, as it is in Japan, maybe. All these results are commanded to go to look for better results in their population because we have many people who die every year here in our country because of this disease so we need to improve the best of knowledge to go forward looking for better results in our population because we have a lot of mortality because of this disease. Gastric cancer is a very important issue here in Latin America and so we need to look for better results every day. So that means we have to look for better surgery and for better systemic therapies. We have a lot of experience in our country because we have several patients with gastric cancer but maybe it’s not enough yet. We need to look forward, maybe to our new trials, to look for better results. We have still a big mortality from this disease.