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Numerous specialists, including epidemiologists, geneticists, pathologists, medical oncologists, surgeons and radiotherapists, discussed about the tumors whose incidence is only 2/100.000 per year: they, just because very rare, pose serious problems for the diagnosis and treatment and they often lack of the financial support for the research, the information and the professional training. Oncology was not the only main subject of the meeting; other important topics were covered: the problems the patients with this type of tumour have to face, the voluntary associations which operate to help these patients and their families and all the existing activities in support of the specialists who have to treat these diseases.The Congress was organised under the aegis of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Rare Tumors, which is located at the San Pio X Private Hospital and is directed by Dr. Claudio Clemente; one of the principal aim of the day was to introduce a new web site: raretumours.org. This new site would like to help researchers and specialists, but also general practitioners and patients, to face the problems of the rare tumours and it will be open to everybody’s collaboration to fill the information about the more than 1200 different tumours, which are part of it. There are two interesting news about the site: it is looking for the largest co-operation through internet to collect data on the rare tumours, which, once verified, will be placed at everybody’s disposal; it is associating the rapid diffusion of the information to the utilisation of advanced technological applications, as for instance the telepathology, which makes possible to share images and “virtual cases”, to directly consult specialist references and to connect |
