I was invited to present and to discuss on the quality and value of cancer surgery. This is a topic which is very close to my heart because it is many, many long years that we have been able to prove that surgical oncologists are better positioned than general surgeons in making the diagnosis, offering treatment and they therefore achieve a far better survival. It’s also about cosmetic outcomes, functional recovery and it’s also about communication with patients and quality of life in general, interaction with the family, reduced litigations and cost effectiveness. So these are several issues which have been proven over the years.
Only recently it appeared that it’s becoming more and more important to stay abreast of the innovations and particularly to engage with the provision of optimal education. Believe it or not, you don’t need to come to a third world country or a continent with developing issues; even in Europe and even in the very same European nations there are pouches of excellence and areas of poor provision of surgical oncology. But we really engage with, particularly the European Society of Surgical Oncology is engaged, is in offering extraordinarily good education in order to optimise the minimal standards. This has been led, again at a European level, for colorectal cancer, melanoma, upper GI, breast cancer recently, and it is crucially important to make sure that we offer top quality surgical care to our patients.
Why is high quality education important? What are the benefits?
The benefits overall are all the above mentioned ones. What I really want to reiterate is that there is huge demand for these from patient advocates. It’s no secret that EUROPA DONNA, the vast movement across Europe which positively engaged with the European Parliament and pushed towards the recognition, the establishment of breast units across Europe, is now asking for the certification of the breast surgeons. Here we are to serve this purpose, we are working on it. Proudly we can say that ESSO has been working on merging all interested partners, societies, masterclasses, consortia in Europe in order to set up BRESSO, the breast component where we demonstrate that our affiliates master the minimal requirements, wherever they are practising, and this is actually our target for the present moment.
