Adnkronos Genoa, November 8 (Adnkronos Salute) – "The MDT (Multidisciplinary Team) project aimed to develop a diagnostic and therapeutic pathway for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma that would be shared by the 13 participating centers nationwide and aligned with national and international recommendations. Obtaining certification was a very important milestone, as it confirmed all the indicators and objectives we had set ourselves."
This was stated by Maurizio Russello, director of the Hepatology Medicine Unit at ARNAS (a nationally renowned and highly specialized hospital) Garibaldi in Catania, speaking in Genoa at the 46th National Congress of SIFO – the Italian Society of Hospital Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Services of Healthcare Companies.
"The project envisaged the creation of a multidisciplinary team, as recommended by the guidelines," Russello continues, "because hepatocellular carcinoma is a tumor with unique characteristics that only such a team can manage. Current treatment options for this cancer range from surgical resection to transplantation, from local-regional therapies (chemoembolization and thermal ablation) to systemic therapy, which today yields astonishing results compared to years ago. Therefore, multidisciplinary expertise is essential to best manage these patients, not only at the time of diagnosis, but also in all subsequent phases when a new treatment decision must be made, a moment that all team members must be aware of."
The expert then presented the preliminary results of the Mtd project, carried out with the technical contribution of Iqvia Solutions and the unconditional support of AstraZeneca. "This pathway," he emphasizes, "has improved patient outcomes, enabling them to receive the best treatments and the most effective therapeutic outcomes. It is also important that the pathway outlined by MDT places patients on an equal footing, allowing everyone to be managed and discussed within a multidisciplinary team. Being treated at a center that has received external certification from an international body also improves patient safety, as it guarantees the quality and efficiency of diagnostic and therapeutic pathways. Hepatocellular carcinoma treatments are highly complex," the hepatologist emphasizes. "Not all centers and hospitals have the expertise, disciplines, and equipment to treat it. We make our multidisciplinary team available to all centers that want and can refer patients to our center, so they can be cared for. This is all part of a network approach to hepatocellular carcinoma, in which a multidisciplinary hub center can also care for patients referred from centers that do not have a certified hepatocellular carcinoma center." they have the equipment to deal with diagnostics and therapy".