Hundreds of doctors, medical students and researchers from across the world would be participating in a three-day scientific symposium on endocrine tumours which will be organised at Christian Medical College here from July 4. This is the first such meet on endocrine tumours that is being held in India.
The symposium, which will be held at the Ida Scudder Auditorium of CMC’s Bagayam campus, is being organised by the institution’s departments of endocrinology, endocrine surgery, nuclear medicine, medical oncology, neurosurgery, radiotherapy and general pathology.
The event’s organizing secretaries professors Thomas V Paul and Deepak Abraham of the department of endocrinology said that the objective of the meet was to update current knowledge of medical professionals in the country on endocrine tumours. Until recently, these tumours used to be handled by general surgeons and only after emergence of the new specialty of endocrine surgery, more focused treatment was made available to patients, they pointed out.
As many as 14 international faculties from Australia, USA, UK and France and 60 experts from India would be sharing their experiences in this field during the symposium. This is the first time that such a large gathering of scientists from fields of biochemistry, genetics and biotechnology would be discussing this theme in the country, the organisers added.
Dr Nihal Thomas, head of department, said that the prevalence of endocrine cancer in India was on par with any other developed country and many varieties of such cancers need not be fatal if diagnosed and treated early. It was found that pituitary cancers were 25 per cent of all brain tumours. Some of these tumours could be cured even without surgery using medication alone.