MUG scientist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, NYC

21.03.2017

Jacek Sznurkowski, M.D. Ph.D., assistant professor in the Clinic of Oncologic Surgery was a guest of prof. Denis Chi, Head of Ovarian Cancer Unit – Gynecology Service in the Department of Surgery at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), New York, USA. The primary aim of the visit was to persuade Americans to validate the new plan of surgical treatment of ovarian cancer (central ligation and no cancer tough technique), which has recently been published by Jacek Sznurkowski M.D. Ph.D. in “World Journal of Surgical Oncology”. The secondary aim was to get acquainted with the principles of the organisation of comprehensive cancer treatment units in one of the best cancer centers in the United States. The MSKCC is the world’s largest private oncology center, which employs 1,033 physicians, 1,723 residents and 2,605 nurses. Within the inpatient treatment there are only 475 beds. In 2016, 2,2467 oncological operations were performed, the average length of stay for in-patients was 6.8 days with a hospital occupancy rate of 90.9%. In the same year, 118,845 radiotherapy treatments and 468,848 diagnostic procedures were performed, including interventional radiology. Currently, in the MSKCC are conducted 879 clinical trials and 285 doctoral projects (265 Ph.D. and 20 M.D. Ph.D.) Also, 548 medical students and 312 nursing students study there every year. Scientists from the MSKCC have expressed their concern that the proposed new technique actually protect against iatrogenic (intraoperative) the spread of cancer cells and, therefore, suggested a joint research project to assess the impact of surgical procedures for ovarian cancer at the level of circulating tumor DNA.