Effective cancer treatment by multidisciplinary teams.

Neoplastic diseases are second, in terms of frequency, cause of death. There are 140 thousand new neoplasm cases and 90 thousand of deaths due to cancer recorded in Poland annually (1). Over 400 thousand people suffer from cancer in Poland and often they remain socially active. The natural neoplasm development is usually unfavourable and active oncological treatment is necessary, with the primary method being surgery, although collaboration of many specialists is increasingly more often required. The developments in surgical techniques influence the improvement in treatment results, yet still the majority of patients reporting to a physician suffer from advanced neoplastic process requiring combination therapy. Combination therapy leads to an improvement in treatment results in approx. 1/3 of patients with neoplasm, most commonly a locally/regionally advanced one. In Poland, the above therapy is used in only half of the patients having indications for such treatment (2). For years, the role of multidisciplinary teams (MTs), the diagnostic and therapeutic activity of which clearly improves the treatment results in neoplasms, has been growing (3, 4).