OCTOBER 23 – 26, 2022
Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide.
According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) cancer deaths worldwide are projected to continue to rise to more than 16.3 million in 2040. The American Cancer Society estimated that in 2022 there will be an estimated 1.9 million new cases of cancer diagnosed in the United States. Conservative estimates show that nearly fifty percent of all cancer patients will receive radiation treatment for their disease and of those, approximately half will be treated with the intent to cure.
Advances in the applications, technologies and methodologies of radiation oncology continue to evolve rapidly and the delivery of radiation therapy has become more complex, making it imperative that the radiation oncology professional remain current in the state-of-the-art techniques. The American Society for Radiation Oncology is committed to providing educational programming that creates a forum for collaboration on issues in radiation oncology.
This 5-day live meeting is designed to improve professional practice by increasing their level of knowledge as required to improve competency and performance in the field of oncology. It will also start to address how advances in digital health care should be best used post pandemic to improve patient care. Attendees need to determine when and how the latest science will affect their day-to-day practice, and thus be able to narrow competency gaps across the various disease sites most commonly treated in radiation oncology.
Attendees also need to determine the skills needed to properly treat patients with high-quality radiation therapy and improve their performance. Some new applications of radiation therapy have not been found to improve outcomes for patients in clinical trials, and this may be in part due to challenges in the implementation of high-quality advanced radiation techniques in the community.
More education about such advanced techniques is needed to raise the bar and set standards for how to best use radiation oncology advanced technologies to benefit patients.