Central-Eastern
European Breast Cancer
Surgical Consortium

DEAR COLLEAGUES!

About the Central-Eastern European Breast Cancer Surgical Consortium

Breast cancer, the leading cause of female morbidity and mortality, is a global health problem. In Europe the introduction of populational breast screening programs, the establishment of standards for the training of specialised health professionals dealing with breast cancer, the standardized requirements of breast units or breast centres, the quality indicators in breast cancer care, the evidence based medicine and the international consensus conferences have successfully created, audited effective European breast cancer care systems.

According to the recent developments and results in molecular genetics, diagnostic imagine, medical and radiation oncology, breast surgery has evolved to an organ specific, highly sophisticated scientific field, fulfilling Veronesi's "minimum effective treatment" theory. Modern breast surgery is able to cover female centered, personalised surgical care, organically incorporating oncological surgical, minimal-invasive-, plastic surgical- and micro-surgical techniques to combine oncological radicality and cosmetic reconstruction, aiming psycho-oncological rehabilitation and better quality of life. The complex expression, first used by Professor Werner Audretsch, namely "onco-plastic" not only indicate different breast surgical techniques, rather the era of breast cancer surgery of the XXIst century.

Different incidence, mortality and survival rates are due to different risk factors, availability of organized screening programmes and oncological health systems, especially access to special breast units and centers represents the differences between the regions and countries of the continent. Differences in national health policies, in healthcare systems, in economical and financial resources, in risk factors and cultural and historical traditions could have been counted as co-factors, responsible for worse oncological results in the developing countries of Europe.

In order to faciliate the evolution from the level of general surgery to the specialised oncoplastic breast surgery in Central and Eastern Europe association of authoritative national institutes, cliniques and centres such as well experienced professionals should optimally join in a common scientific and clinical platform to increase the efficiency and speed of modernization of breast surgical care in countries of Central-Eastern Europe.

The Central-Eastern European Breast Cancer Surgical Consortium (CEEBCSC) was officially established on the 10th of October, 2018 at the 38th Congress of the European Society of Surgical Oncology in Budapest by partner institutes and departments from Hungary, Poland, Russian Federation, Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Armenia and Czech Republic.