ESMO Clinical Practice Guidelines offering the best standards of cancer care with improved methodology

Formerly known as the ESMO Clinical Recommendations, the ESMO Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG) which offer vital, evidence-based information including the incidence of the malignancy, diagnostic criteria, staging of disease and risk assessment, treatment plans and follow-up, are intended to provide users with a set of requirements for the highest standard of care for cancer patients.

A growing number of the new guidelines have been developed using large, multidisciplinary writing groups, ensuring optimal input from the oncology profession and better geographic representation.

They include guidelines for breast cancer, colorectal cancer and non-small cell lung cancer that have been expanded to include more treatment details and further discussion of the importance of multidisciplinary plans for particular patient settings.

Lung cancer is now dealt with in two distinct guidelines, one covering early and locally advanced cancer, while the other focuses on metastatic disease.  One new guideline is focused specifically on cardiotoxicity, a potential side-effect of some chemotherapeutic agents.

Four further guidelines have been rewritten, drawing on the knowledge of the global oncology community. These include guidelines on Soft Tissue sarcoma and Bone Sarcomas, and a guideline on the prevention of Chemotherapy- and radiotherapy–induced nausea and vomiting, developed as a result of the 3rd Perugia Consensus Conference organized by the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer (MASCC) and ESMO.

Other guidelines have also been reviewed.  The new guidelines published this month and available online represent the first stage of a process that will include recommendations for more than 55 different clinical situations, covering almost all tumor types as well as various other topics including the therapeutic use of growth factors. 

http://www.esmo.org/education/esmo-clinical-practice-guidelines.html