This is a conference that is covering all the areas of radiation oncology.

There has been an important consideration to ethics, important consideration to nutrition and there is important consideration to new techniques – radio-oncology, radiosurgery, and the importance of combined treatments, expressing the need for multimodality for the focussing of the patient with cancer and not forgetting the nutritional factors that have to be kept, particularly when head and neck cancers are being considered.

What impact will this topic have in the advancements of oncology?

The round table I had to preside was head and neck cancer which started with a homage to Dr Kian Ang, a great professor, a great friend of ALATRO, who passed away a little more than a month ago.

We were expecting him to deliver a conference today but he was very well replaced by Dr Lou Harrison.

Then we had four more speakers and the conference started speaking about the use of inter-operative brachytherapy in combination with external or not and surgery or not and chemo or not, or the combination of all of them, particularly for recurrent cancers.

Then we had the very important contribution of a Columbian head and neck surgeon with a very long expertise in the topic who expressed the possibilities of resecting very large lesions and the importance of sparing normal tissues in the procedure, the importance of the grafts that are changing the surgical strategies.

Then we had a very good presentation of the importance of the combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy in almost all head and neck cancers, particularly those that are not of very good prognosis.

Then we finished speaking about the importance of the nutritional support with a very good roundtable.