The Hospital da Luz Lisbon marked World Pancreatic Cancer Day , on the 18 th of November, with a meeting between specialists in the area , to discuss future perspectives regarding the diagnosis and therapeutics of this disease, which is increasingly prevalent and still very underdiagnosed. The meeting, organized by the clinical director and coordinator of the pancreatic and esophagus-gastroduodenal centers at Hospital da Luz Lisbon, the surgeon Rui Maio , brought together professionals from various specialties directly involved in the diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic cancer, and was also attended by Christopher Wolfgang, university professor and director of pancreatic surgery at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who spoke in Lisbon about the state of the art in pancreatic cancer surgery. During the day of work, topics such as genetic predisposition and the role of screening, and precision medicine in pancreatic cancer were debated. As Rui Maio declared to the press present at the event, «looking into the future in this area involves achieving earlier diagnoses and improving more targeted therapies, which implies investigating the subtypes that exist» , he said, quoted by Just News. Pancreatic cancer is currently the third leading cause of death from cancer and may, in 2030, become the second. The incidence of this neoplasm has been increasing, even at younger ages, and is now starting to appear more and more in patients over 40 years of age. At Grupo Luz Saúde, namely at Hospital da Luz Lisboa, clinical activity in this area has been growing significantly and, as Rui Maio told Just News, «we are treating an increasing number of patients in accordance with the state of the art, offering the most up-to-date and recent therapies, in line with current best practices» . At this meeting, it was also revealed that the Group has made a strong commitment to scientific activity, in partnership with the largest Portuguese research centers, such as the Institute of Molecular Medicine (IMM), the Institute of Pathology and Molecular Immunology of the University of Porto (IPATIMUP) and the Faculty of Science and Technology of Universidade Nova de Lisboa (FCT-UNL). World Pancreatic Cancer Day is always marked on the third Thursday of November. At Hospital da Luz Lisboa, this was the second year that this World Day was a pretext for specialists to talk about the most current in pancreatic cancer medicine.
