Dra. Lilian Vivas

The conference has resulted to be quite interesting, me and my colleagues dealt with the topic of ovarian carcinoma for half of the day. We’ll begin with one conference; this one in particular discusses the possible relation between ovarian cancer and inheritance, and the possibilities of preventing said cancer. Then will come a conference that basically deals with the topic of surgery and its primary role in treatment of ovarian cancer. Later will come the topic of treatment with chemotherapy and the emergence of targeted therapies, these new drug that are appearing and basically how this composes in full how ovarian carcinoma is treated.

What might be the impact of the issues that will be addressed in the conference in the coming advances in oncology?

Everyday more and more studies are showing that 15 years ago life expectancy for ovarian cancer were significantly shorter than nowadays. Then there were changes in medications, treatments, surgery, all of this adding to our patients survival, and recently more than ever new medications are emerging, which are adding to the patients overall life expectancy with the disease, having spent 15 years without the emergence of any substantial medications, to the appearance now of medications that are once again beginning to change the history of cancer treatment. I think that is the real importance.

What would be your message to the entire medical community from your experience in this specific conference?

I strongly recommend that we look towards working as a group, in teams, in creating multidisciplinary units. From the perspective of oncology, working alone is very hard; we must try to work together, hand in hand, doctors, surgeons, medical oncologists, radiotherapists. If we don’t achieve what is working as a group, it will be hard to succeed.