Modern Day Radiation Oncology & Cancer Care—A Continuing Medical Education Program

Tanya Mendes (Senior Managing Editor, Medicine) and I, Christine Miranda (Managing Editor, Center of Excellence for Cancer research), recently attended a Continuing Medical Education meeting on Modern Day Radiation Oncology & Cancer Care at Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurgaon, a leading hospital in India.

The meeting was attended primarily by radiation oncologists and covered a wide range of topics from an overview of the role of radiotherapy in cancer management to new generation techniques such as deformable image registration, linac-based stereotactic radiation therapy for brain tumors and stereotactic body radiation therapy for extracranial tumors, and volumetric rotational therapy. The panel discussions were rather interesting, where trends, challenges, and solutions in radiation therapy were actively discussed. Another discussion was on how advances in radiation therapy contribute to improvements in cancer care on the whole. Specific to the Indian scenario, the need for cancer registries was emphasized on, and it was very enlightening to know how these can contribute much in identifying trends. The meeting concluded with cancer patients describing their treatment experience, reiterating that patient care should be the focus of research in this field.