Event Details

The WCIO Board of Directors had its trimester meeting during CIO in Miami Beach last month, taking advantage of the numerous WCIO leaders present on the faculty as well as the presence of many of our corporate partners. 

Once you waded through the curtain of corpulence bursting out of way too little leopard-print Spandex that defines Miami Beach couture, The Fountainbleu provided a nice compact venue for the vendors in the foyer outside a single plenary hall. Shaun Samuels’ team with guest program directors Fred Lee from Wisconsin and Bob Lewandowski from Northwestern did a great job assembling a rapid-fire program of clinical updates, tumor boards, treatment planning, and technique sessions. 

The program resonated with my current and former trainees who are starting or expanding their IO practices. “Listening to the other subspecialists (rad onc, surgery, oncology) discuss treatment options and patient management decisions during the multidisciplinary case presentations was definitely useful. The other part of CIO I found most useful was learning the approach and techniques other IRs use for ablation. Hearing about their preferred ablation modality for a given lesion was interesting and learning about the pitfalls they encountered was also very educational. One theme that was consistent throughout the conference was the importance of the use of DynaCT during chemoembolizations to obtain the best visualization of any treatment zone and make sure you are embolizing all of the target lesions you intended to treat.”

“Tumor board cases were a great way to review a variety of typical and some unusual cases that one might have to decide how best to treat in real life. It was both helpful and reassuring to see different expert opinions on how they would approach each case. Handouts were a great idea. Instead of having to scribble down algorithms or try to read my notes later I was given laminated handouts with algorithms and survival data. This will be helpful in just a few months when I'm on my own. Tips and tricks were helpful too. It focused more on the finer but important points of how to avoid tacking pleura in lung or seeding tumor in liver ablation.”

While the WCIO annual scientific meeting in New York positions itself as the leading academic IO meeting in the world, CIO complements it by providing practical “who, when & how” education that helps people grow successful IO programs. The leaderships of WCIO and CIO met to explore ways to strengthen our complementary relationship in the future. Meetings with our corporate partners were also very positive, with substantial increases in support for both the annual meeting and our year-round activities in global IO education, training, and practive development.

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