Event Details

WCIO kicked off its 2014 season of VuMedi webinars yesterday with the first of three programs devoted to percutaneous tumor ablation. This session focused on lung ablation. Over 85 registrants from North America, South America, and Asia participated live. I was excited to see friends from Brazil and Argentina engaged in the program, helping the WCIO mission to expand access to IO education in Latin America.

Moderated by Deepak Sudheendra and Michael Soulen from the University of Pennsylvania, the mix of academic and private practice faculty included Sandeep Bagla from INOVA Fairfax, Rob Suh from UCLA, and Peter Littrup from Karmanos Cancer Center in Detroit. Short presentations covered patient selection, technique, choice of ablation technology in different scenarios, and management of difficult cases and complications. Like the prior webinars on embolization, a lively discussion with the panelists and audience lasted until the final second of the 1.5 hour session. Common concerns included how to start and build a lung ablation program, and competition with SBRT and surgery.

Audience polling revealed that 50% of the registrants were looking to start a lung ablation program, while 43% were still doing less than one a month on average -- so the topic is clearly quite timely. The majority were using both heat and cryo technology, with 5%-6% also using IRE.  Most were treating both primary and metastatic tumors.

The webinar will be available for viewing on VuMedi shortly. The prior webinars on chemoembolization and radioembolization remain quite popular, with over 2000 viewings each since their live debut. The direct links are:

https://www.vumedi.com/video/developing-a-chemoembolization-practice/?list=424d79d8-1f11-4a21-952d-c69b4d03d8d0

https://vumedi.com/video/intro-to-sirspheres-indications-contraindications-and-how-to-start-a-sirspheres-program/?list=fdddc194-6c18-407b-b223-2b872258269f

Keep your eye out for announcements of the next programs in this series, on liver/kidney ablation and MSK ablation/fixation.

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