ESGO 2013

ESGO president-elect discusses the future goals of the society

Prof Vesna Kesnic - ESGO President Elect

This is a magnificent event here, all sorts of different things happening. How did you come up with the idea of having it in Liverpool and what’s different about this meeting this year?

This is our traditional bi-annual meeting. I must say that ESGO is a society which this year celebrates thirty years; it’s not a young society. So thirty years, a lot of effort and time has been put into the development of ESGO. So this meeting is the 18th bi-annual meeting which is different in terms that the scientific programme is developed in a different way, it covers many different aspects of oncology, gynaecological oncology ,includes some new data, some of them for the first time presented here, many different aspects of discussions and presentations of the large field of gynaecological cancer.

What sort of cancer clinicians are you catering for this year?

We call it in general gynaecological cancer but this is cervical cancer, ovarian cancer, uterine cancer…

Doctors and also researchers?

Doctors and researchers because ESGO is a multidisciplinary society, we are happy to say that now we have nearly 2,000 members and not only gynae oncologists; they are researchers, radiotherapists, medical oncologists. So this is one of the aims, to make it really even more multi-professional.

I think a lot of those members are right here because there are certainly a lot of people attending. What are the big issues that you see as being important for doctors and other cancer clinicians to focus on in gynaecological oncology?

It’s a large field, many tumour types, so it’s not just one tumour type that you can develop. This is so many advances; in all of these tumour types you can find some achievements and then it is especially about therapy. For example, ovarian cancer, the developments in therapy, research, use of biomarkers; on the other hand in surgery, the extent of surgery, the involvement of laparoscopy and robotics into the surgery, modern technology. We are searching for new ways of following up patients, new biomarkers to be used in the selection of patients for different types of follow-ups. So that is really amazing, this is an amazing congress with many… it’s too short a time to tell you what.

How much do you feel there is a cross-fertilisation between East Europe and West Europe?

This is one of the major, I may say, ESGO achievements because, let’s say, ten years ago we had only about less than thirty, three zero, members in the big society from Eastern Europe. So during the last couple of years ESGO has been focussed to develop links, to develop collaboration and now we have almost a third of our members coming from countries of Eastern and Central Europe where still very good and skilled doctors are working, they have their patients, they successfully treat them but for them it is not easy to attend congresses, to publish papers. They, of course, need better equipment, investments in research. But this is the essence of our collaboration in between developed and developing countries in terms of organisation in gynae oncology. So this is one of the major achievements - we can be happy to say that we now have the whole of Europe included into our society.

Finally, then, the meeting is in full swing now. Could you give me one or two messages that you’d like doctors and other clinicians to take home from this meeting here in Liverpool?

These meetings are always the chance to learn something, of course, but even more they are the chance to link the people to make them collaborate, to make friendships and a long-term, fruitful collaboration between individuals and between centres. So if you ask me to give some message to my colleagues that would be go together. Go together with ESGO into the further field of research and all areas which gynaecological oncology offers and should cover.

Thank you Vesna.

Thank you.