Interventional Oncology Meetings Around the Globe

As 2014 winds down, the impact of interventional oncology continues to be felt around the globe. Three meetings with a focus on IO concluded in Malaysia, Argentina, and Shanghai between October and November of 2014.

The Malaysian Society of Interventional Radiology (MYSIR) was officially founded in October 2012 with Dr. Josephine Subramaniam as its first president. The MYSIR 2014 meeting was held in Kuala Lumpur from October 9 to 11, 2014, with local and international faculty from Australia, UK and USA. The agenda included detailed sessions on HCC and mCRC along with workshops and tumor board discussions with a multidisciplinary faculty.

The following week,”Best of WCIO” welcomed its participants to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Ricardo Garcia Monaco, MD, Chairman of Radiology, Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, organized this very successful 3-day meeting in October that attracted a multidisciplinary audience with extensive coverage of oncology topics along with the state of the art status on ablative and transarterial options.

The 10th Chinese Conference of Minimally Invasive Therapy in Oncology and the 1st Scientific Meeting of Asia-Pacific Association of Imaging-guided Therapy in Oncology was held from November 6 to 9, 2014 in Shanghai, China, with an aim to promote the robust development of image-guided therapy in oncology. Conference chairs Peihong Wu, MD, Chairman of Radiology, Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center in Guangzhou, and Simon Chun Ho Yu, MD, from the Prince of Wales Hospital in Hong Kong organized this meeting with experts from all over the world presenting on topics including vascular and nonvascular interventional therapy for cancer treatment, tumor ablation (including radiofrequency ablation, microwave ablation, laser therapy, cryotherapy, HIFU, and irreversible electroporation, and so on), brachytherapy, minimally invasive pain alleviation, molecular targeted therapy, endoscopic tumor treatment, minimally invasive surgery in oncology, and techniques of image guidance.

It was my distinct honor to have delivered the keynote address at this meeting and to join the board of AAITO (Asia-Pacific Association of Imaging-guided Therapy in Oncology). The first board meeting set the agenda for the education and promotion of IO along with unveiling a dedicated IO education website. Being a part of these amazing meetings in different parts of the globe gave me an opportunity to experience first hand the tremendous interest in interventional oncology and the advances made in these countries. These are exciting times for our specialty and it looks like we are just warming up, with more to come in 2015. Stay tuned.