A reference center for the study of neuroendocrine tumors will open in Irkutsk

A seminar on neuroendocrine tumors was held in the Irkutsk Cancer Center. For the past few years interest in this problem has developed due to a significant increase in the incidence of such tumors, with the growth rate that is far ahead of all other cancers.

- The contingent of these patients, registered in the country's oncologic centers, has increased 7-8 times over the last decade! – emphasized the leading researcher of the medical biotechnological laboratory of the Research Institute of Experimental Diagnostics and Tumor Therapy FGBU “NMIC oncology of the NN Blokhin” of the Russia Health Ministry, MD, professor Vera Gorbunova. - This problem is aggravated by the fact that the average time from manifestation of the disease to diagnosis is nearly 52 months, according to the patient survey. Thus, neither the patient nor his doctors for over four years know what he is sick with, and what kind of treatment should be applied. Also 29% of patients took more than five years to diagnose. This leads to the fact that at the time of diagnosis almost two-thirds of patients already have distant metastases.

Some of these tumors are inherited, which means genetic tests are required for a more accurate diagnosis - and currently they are performed only in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

- In this matter, we are falling behind our foreign colleagues by approximately 30–50 years, said MD, professor of general surgery and anesthesiology department of IGMU, honored scientist of the Russian Federation Semeon Pinsky, a specialist with 50 years of experience, who is, in fact, the Endocrine Surgery founder in Irkutsk.– Indeed, in the Soviet years, genetics was considered a bourgeois pseudoscience. As a result, our foreign colleagues today know about 6,000 hereditary diseases, many of which are oncological - even some names of these diseases are unknown to our doctors! In this aspect, I would like to mention the efforts of the head physician of the Irkutsk Cancer Center Victoria Dvornichenko, who is not only well aware of our lag, but is working on reducing it: for example, the genetic laboratory that specializes in the diagnosis of hereditary oncological diseases, has been working in the medical institution she heads.

            

Since 2014, reference centers for the study of such tumors have been established all over the world. In Russia, these centers have appeared in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Rostov. Today, the question about the organization of new ones has been raised so patients can use their services without making long journeys. One of the new reference centers for neuroendocrine tumors diagnosis will open in Irkutsk on the basis of the Regional Cancer Center. Therefore, local patients will have to go to central Russia only if local doctors are having difficulties with the diagnosis – nonetheless, such difficult patients still will be treated in Irkutsk, according to the recommendations of Moscow, St. Petersburg or Rostov specialists. To reduce the difficulties with diagnostics for local doctors, seminars like the one that took place in the Irkutsk Cancer Center and held, as the seminar was an organizational, but also a scientific with participants from Irkutsk, Buryatia, Trans-Baikal Territory and Sakhalin.