United for your health: Experts in different medical specialties

Close cooperation of specialists in different fields are a specialty of our center. One of these concepts is called “visceral medicine”. Our patients are treated by surgeon, internist and anesthesiologist in close cooperation. In daily interdisciplinary meetings diagnostics, indications for surgery, risk factors and postoperative management are discussed and optimized to ensure optimal treatment for the patient within the infrastructure of the hospital.

Tumor board

Since March 2010 an interdisciplinary tumor board was established and certified at the ISAR Klinikum. Every 2 weeks surgeons, internists, oncologists and radiotherapists meet to discuss cancer cases and recommend treatment options.

In the treatment of gastrointestinal tumors multi modality concepts are used increasingly. Surgery is only a partial (important) aspect of the whole treatment concept and additional treatment modalities like radiotherapy, chemotherapy, immunotherapy and many others are employed. For many years I have worked within a network of specialists which enabled us to offer fast and effective treatment to my patients. This network is now continued in the tumor board at the ISAR Klinikum. 

In rectal cancer for instance we use a combination of radio- and chemotherapy before the operation. Aim of this treatment is to get the tumor to shrink and eliminate potential local metastases. This would make the operation later on easier and more effective. This preoperative therapy takes several weeks and is followed by restaging investigations in order to assess the effect of treatment. After 3-4 weeks of rest for the patient (this time is needed to “cool off” the effect of radiotherapy), we proceed with the operation. Similar concepts are used in gastric cancer. The important thing is that every single case is assessed carefully and treatment is tailored to the individual needs of the patient.