Saifee Hospital – one of Mumbai’s renowned - multispecialty hospital and the first to have a dedicated Peritoneal surface malignancy unit in the country, today, compered an international conference on “Annual Update in Peritoneal Surface Oncology” from 20th to 22nd February 2020, at the Tata Memorial Hospital. The conference addressed the needs of both beginners and experienced peritoneal surface oncologists providing a comprehensive update on the current standards of care in the field as well as the emerging therapies.

The Three-day extensive scientific program had the best in the field from around the world who conducted interesting sessions including the basics, topics of debate and the new developments in this field, through lectures, training workshops and case study discussions. Video sessions and live surgeries were performed by the experts that were streamed live from the operation theatre in Saifee Hospital. The highlight of the program was live surgical demonstration conducted by Dr. Paul Sugarbaker, well-known for developing the principles of peritoneal cancer surgery. Along with the other stalwarts of the field like Prof. Olivier Glehen (Lyon, France), Prof. Yutaka Yonemura (Osaka, Japan), Dr. Avanish Saklani (India), Dr. K S Gopinath (India), Dr. Francois Quenet (Montpeliier, France), Dr Shivendra Singh (India), Dr. Ramakrishnan A S (India), Prof. Sang-Yoon Park (National Cancer Center, Korea) and Dr. Aditi Bhatt (India).

The primary objective of this initiative was to educate and collaborate with fellow practitioners and experts. Based on registry statistics, Mumbai alone has more than 2000 patients that have this aggressive form of disease, where standard treatment modalities give poor results. The idea is to create awareness of the medical fraternity, to help in early diagnosis so that patients could be referred to a high volume centre for better treatment.

Commenting on the same, Dr. Sanket Mehta – Chief of Division of Peritoneal Surface Oncology at Saifee Hospital & President of Society of Peritoneal Surface Oncology, India said, “This is our Xth year and we are extremely thrilled to have witnessed such a great turnout for the program year on year. Our objective is to create a credible industry platform and assimilate some of the greatest talent from the world at one point and exchange the latest developments and learnings in the field. The exchange of knowledge from the experts around the world certainly would provide an edge to the new doctors and other medical practitioners in the field of Oncology”

Highlights of the program:

Day 1: Rationale for treating peritoneal metastases, Ovarian Cancer- Current surgical standards and case discussion with the experts

Day 2: Live surgery, Preventative and Social Medicine Programme(PSM), Prescription Monitoring Programme(PMP) and Mesothelioma and rare tumours

Day 3: Collaboration in Peritoneal Surface Oncology, Gastric Cancer and Colorectal Cancer