Function and responsibility of an interdisciplinary tumor center. Need for a "cancer center" for multimodal therapy concepts

Abstract

Cancer will be the leading cause of death in industrialized countries within the next few years. A successful treatment represents a great challenge within the next years and requires multimodality treatment approaches. An multidisciplinary tumour center is essential for coordination and communication between different departments and institutions and is important to maintain standards in diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Two years ago, a cancer center was founded in Marburg. The central facility of its work is a twice weekly tumour conference, where patients requiring multimodality treatment approaches are presented and treatment procedures are fixed and documented. Furthermore, guidelines for diagnosis and treatment of the various cancer diseases will be established and the transfer of clinical and experimental research to the actual patient treatment is intended. A total of 407 patients were discussed within the first year. Leading cancer entities were lung cancer, colorectal cancer and tumours of the upper GI-tract. The tumour conference has improved the communication between all involved disciplines. The process of standardisation of diagnostic and therapeutic procedures is ongoing. The next step will be the documentation of the further follow up of all patients discussed in the tumour conference. In the communication between all disciplines involved in cancer patient care, success, be it a survival benefit or an improvement in quality of life, is most likely. All the described tasks are best organized within a cancer center.