10. SCIENTIFIC MEETING with international participationTUMORS OF THE PROSTATE
On November 30, 2023 in the library of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the jubilee 10th scientific meeting with international participation Tumors of the prostate was held. This scientific
meeting was jointly organized by the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, its Department of Medical Sciences – Committee on Tumors, UHC Sisters of Mercy and UHC Zagreb.
The president of the organizing committee of the meeting was prof. Ana Fröbe, head of the Clinic for Oncology and Nuclear Medicine UHC Sisters of Mercy.
The meeting was successful and brought together about 100 medical professionals dealing with prostate cancer. The meeting was attended by leading Croatian experts dealing with the diagnosis
and treatment of prostate cancer, with the participation, both live and virtually, of established international experts who are active in researching new possibilities for the diagnosis and treatment of
prostate cancer.
The professions represented at the meeting were urology, oncology, pathology, radiology, nuclear medicine and others, emphasizing the multidisciplinary nature of care for patients with prostate cancer.
The group was divided into 4 thematic units: epidemiology and diagnostics, surgery, radiotherapy and systemic treatment. At the meeting, through lectures and discussion, the following current
topics of particular interest came to the fore: the place of advanced robotic surgery in modern prostate cancer surgery and the role of laparoscopic surgical techniques (both techniques are available
within the Croatian public health system and each has its place); following the EU directive Beat Cancer Plan, a national project for early detection of prostate cancer was announced, in which the
key diagnostic modality will be multiparametric magnetic resonance of the prostate; international authorities presented experience from a multicenter consortium of localized prostate cancer on the
prognostic importance of PSA dynamics during treatment and the role of magnetic resonance imaging in radiotherapy imaging; the role of genomic analyzes in the precise treatment of prostate cancer is emphasized, as well as discoveries in the molecular biology of prostate cancer that may indicate the development of resistance to available therapy in advanced disease. The importance of personalized treatment when many different options are available is more important than ever, and for the therapy to be clinically precise, a prerequisite is molecular and functional biologically precise imaging of prostate cancer with modern PET/CT techniques based on PSMA as an attractive radiopharmaceutical. The meeting also discussed rational pharmacotherapy and interactions of new generation drugs for prostate cancer with other drugs in the context of patients with comorbidities. Clear recommendations for practice were given, and international guidelines were commented on and how best to implement them in Croatian conditions of limited material and human resources.
The special value of the meeting was the live discussions of experts, because the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer requires close interdisciplinary cooperation of several medical professions (each of
which has a specific view of certain clinical scenarios) in conditions of rapid progress in medical science.
The meeting showed the involvement of the Clinic for Oncology and Nuclear Medicine UHC Sisters of Mercy. in contemporary trends in the treatment of prostate cancer as well as active international participation.
Next year, this scientific symposium is organized by the UHC Zagreb Urology Clinic and its head, academician Željko Kaštelan, who also announced the tentative date of the symposium in November 2024.
Ana Fröbe