ESSO 38 - sharing our work with European cancer surgeons

Dr Beth Levick, BCI UK Research Fellow, reports back from ESSO 38.

This month Dr Becky Birch and I were able to share our work with surgeons from across Europe at the European Society of Surgical Oncology (ESSO) conference in Budapest, Hungary (10-12th October). The conference is a chance for cancer surgeons to gain insight from some of their most experienced colleagues worldwide. They also hear the latest research that will be driving improvements in frontline clinical practice.

Becky gave a talk showing that older rectal cancer patients aren’t undergoing surgery as often as other age groups. More importantly, from her results it is not just the case that older patients always do worse after surgery; this isn’t enough to explain the difference. As well as being selected as one of the top submitted papers to the conference, Becky was also eventually selected as the best presentation, netting her the Niall O’Higgins Award! There is more on her huge achievement in the BCI UK News Section. The judging panel and many other delegates highlighted the importance of the work and potential for positive impact on treating rectal cancer.

I gave a “poster in the spotlight” short talk. My talk explained how we can use routine data to calculate key measures of surgical quality. These measures, returns to theatre after surgery and failure to rescue, suggest quality varies between different groups of patients. The Chairs had questions about how we can explain the large variation between hospital Trusts. This will hopefully be the aim of future work.

The next ESSO conference will take place in Rotterdam, October 2019.