Education & Training Committee Position Paper

The European Society of Surgical Oncology, ESSO, was founded in 1981 to advance the art, science and practice of surgery for the treatment of cancer.

ESSO believes that this should be done in a multidisciplinary collaboration between many specialities where thorough knowledge about cancer, excellent surgical technical expertise in the field of respective organ and in-depth knowledge of their function is necessary.

The present trend in surgical subspecialisation is mainly organ-based, treating malignant, benign and functional conditions of the involved organ. During the last decades general surgery has been divided up in several subspecialities such as GI surgery, hepato-pancreaticobiliary surgery, coloproctology, endocrine surgery. Organ-based cancer surgery lacks a thorough knowledge of cancer disease and the risk is that this leads to suboptimal treatment. To stimulate and influence young surgeons to train in surgical oncology ESSO has appointed an Educational and Training Committee (ETC).