Cancer Specialists Meet at ASCO in Chicago

Update from 2008 ASCO Meeting in Chicago

Some thoughts from Kate Murphy . . .

I’m in Chicago for the 2008 American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting.  It’s huge!  More than 30,000 doctors and researchers from all over the world here to find out about the latest cancer research.

The convention center is huge, the big full of research abstracts is huge, the ideas are the biggest of all.

I’ll try to send new information along to you, as well as share some of my own impressions during the next few days here.

My feet hurt!  I got up a little after 4 eastern time this morning to drive to the airport.  Bad weather kept us stuck in New York for several hours, so I was late getting here and hungry!  Cashews and diet coke didn’t make a very filling lunch.

I checked into the hotel, left my bags unpacked, and took a shuttle bus over to McCormick Place where dozens of meetings — some very large, some smaller are held, all at the same time.  It seems like miles between bus drop offs and registration sites and sessions.  People are everywhere, riding escalators from level to level, making their way through the three giant buildings that make up the McCormick Center.

Amazing to sit with thousands of doctors listening to the top specialists in the world talking about treating colon cancer that has spread to the liver — a medical oncologist, a surgeon, and a radiologist.  All made the same very important points:

• Treatment for liver mets is changing.  The old rules just don’t apply anymore.  More people can be treated, more people can be cured.
• A multidisciplinary team is critical right from the beginning.  Medical oncologists need to be talking with surgeons and radiologists, making a plan together.

No one hotel would ever hold this big crowd.  We’re staying all over Chicago, shuttled from our hotels to  the convention center by a fleet of buses.

At the end of the day, my sore feet and I limped onto a bus to have dinner with a great bunch of patient advocates who have been learning about research via webinars in preparation for the ASCO meeting.

More impressions tomorrow.  Watch the the  C3 site — FightColorectalCancer.org — for ASCO research updates and more of my adventures at ASCO.

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