Specialist Shortages Could Affect European Medical Oncology

The European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO; Lugano, Switzerland) warns that many European countries may face a future shortage of medical oncologists without realizing it, a situation that could have dire consequences for cancer patients.

ESMO researchers reviewed data regarding the projected number of medical oncologists in Europe and tried to predict if European countries will face a shortage of medical oncologists by 2020; adequate data was only available, however, for 12 of 27 European Union nations. When looking at the available data, the researchers concluded that there will not be any shortage of medical oncologists in Central European and Western European countries by 2020, but the data was not available for several countries with large populations, including the Russian Federation, Turkey, Spain, Poland, and Greece.

The researchers warned, however, that the data is based on cancer incidence and not cancer prevalence; furthermore, the current economic crisis might have an influence on the number of doctors and specialists migrating to other countries. Additionally, the data indicates that the number of people who develop cancers in greater Europe is expected to grow to 3.4 million each year by 2020, representing a 20% increase from 2002.

ESMO believes that continuous monitoring from official authorities is the only way to ensure that the ratio of new cases of cancer to medical oncologists is adequate, allowing specialist-training programs to be modified and new posts for medical oncologists created to maintain adequate numbers. The review was presented at the European Cancer Congress, held during September 2013 in Amsterdam (The Netherlands).

“We believe the next step is to endeavor to collect data from the nonsurveyed countries in order to have definitive information about the expected change in number of medical oncologists across all EU countries,” said consultant medical oncologist Raffaele Califano, MD, chair of the ESMO Young Oncologists Committee. “This will help to understand fully if Europe is ready to face the new cancer cases predicted by 2020 and appropriate resources are in place.”

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European Society for Medical Oncology