Tag Archives: esmo

Cancer during pregnancy: chemotherapy and radiotherapy are safe for babies, studies suggest

“When chemotherapy is administered after the first trimester of pregnancy, we cannot discern any problems in the children,” says lead author Dr Frederic Amant, KU Leuven and University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium. “Fear about the risks of chemotherapy administration should not be a reason to terminate a pregnancy, delay cancer treatment for the mother, or to deliver a baby prematurely.” Concerns about the potential impact of cancer treatment on unborn children has until recently left some oncologists hesitant to administer treatments to pregnant cancer patients, says Amant. To address these concerns, his group has led three new studies presented at ESMO 2014. …

More than 70% of young oncologists in Europe suffer symptoms of burnout

“Oncology is an exceptionally rewarding career, but it can be demanding and stressful at times,” said Dr Susana Banerjee, lead author of the study and a consultant medical oncologist at The Royal Marsden NHS Trust in London, UK. “Oncologists make complex decisions about cancer management, supervise the use of toxic therapies, work long hours, and continually face patients suffering and dying,” she said…

Is Europe equipped with enough medical oncologists? Horizon still unknown

But the society has also warned that a worrying lack of information about the situation in Eastern Europe must be urgently addressed. Published in the Annals of Oncology this week, the survey provides the first detailed information on the current number of medical oncologists in 12 European Union countries, mostly in Western Europe, and their predicted availability by 2020. Around the world countries are struggling to ensure their medical oncology systems can deal with the increase in cancer cases, says ESMO Press Officer Solange Peters, a lung cancer expert from the university of Lausanne, Switzerland. Until now, nobody could say what the situation was in Europe. …