The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) and the Oncology Unit of the 3rd Department of Medicine, Medical School of Athens, “Sotiria” Hospital, Greece organized and hosted the Best of the 16th World Conference of Lung Cancer (WCLC) in Athens, Greece, on January 14, 2016.
The conference was successful. Almost 400 doctors attended. In addition, live streaming allowed further access both nationally and Europe-wide with 50 doctors from Athens, Greece, 140 European physicians from Hungary, Russia, Poland, and the United Kingdom attending the conference virtually through the Internet. The meeting’s faculty was multinational and included Greek, British, French, Israeli, Spanish, Turkish, and American speakers. Each lecturer presented a medical topic from the 16th WCLC honed to his or her special area of medical interest. The scientific program included thoracic oncology topics with high impact in our daily clinical/research practice such as prevention/tobacco control, screening/early detection of lung cancer, biology, pathology, and molecular testing. A separate session that focused on the treatment of localized NSCLC disease concluded the first day of the meeting. In addition, Ramon Rami-Porta, MD, chaired a round table on “New Staging System for NSCLC.”
The second day of the meeting included updates from the 16th WCLC on the topics of screening for lung cancer, thoracic surgery, radiotherapy, medical oncology, nursing, tobacco control, supportive care and thoracic malignancies beyond NSCLC.
The scientific audience was multidisciplinary in nature and included trainees, early career doctors, consultants, and experts from all the subspecialties involved in the management of lung cancer.
The meeting was an opportunity for our colleagues from Greece to interact with colleagues from neighboring countries, mainly the Balkans and the Middle East, and to participate at a highly scientific event that had content focused on the latest studies presented at the IASLC WCLC.
