|
|
|
Symposium voorafgaand aan het uitspreken van de oratie van prof. dr. Jelle Wesseling.
It is my privilege to invite you to the symposium ‘Finding the balance between over- and undertreatment’, two grand challenges in current cancer diagnosis and treatment. By spotlighting these areas, we aim to discover new ways to advance the quality of cancer care.
First, clinicians should realign attention and efforts to avoid overdiagnosis and, as a consequence, overtreatment to achieve optimal patient care. Overdiagnosis, defined as the detection of a “disease” that will never manifest symptoms nor lead to death during a patient's expected ordinary lifetime, can be the by-product of screening for early forms of disease. While screening saves lives for some, it may inadvertently turn others into patients, leading to treatments with no benefit and that perhaps do harm. Since most people who are diagnosed are respectively treated, it is difficult to assess whether overdiagnosis has occurred in an individual, emphasizing an area of clinical imprecision in need of reform.
Second, the burden of ineffective treatment of cancer should be prevented. Even though treatment strives for the optimal benefit-to-harm ratio, multiple patients (number needed to treat ~ NNT) often undergo standard treatment for the benefit of only one. Obviously, we should design strategies to distinguish patients that will benefit from a particular treatment from those that will not, saving them the burden of often toxic, but needless treatment.
The symposium aims to explain and discuss ways to understand and address these challenges, combining expertise from epidemiology, screening, surgery, pathology, genomics and policymaking. I look forward to your participation and vivid discussions in our ongoing efforts to improve current clinical practice for the benefit of many.
Learning goals
