The Department of Abdominal Medical Oncology at Cancer Hospital of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CHUCAS, Zhejiang Cancer Hospital) was initially founded under the leadership of Dr. ZHONG Haijun in October 2008 on the basis of former Group of Diagnosis and Treatment of Gastrointestinal Cancer, Department of Chemotherapy. CHUCAS is the only provincial hospital in Zhejiang province that divides departments according to tumor locations, which confers more accurate and professional diagnosis, treatment and care of patients. The team from our department consists of well-trained experts, including 5 chief physicians, 6 associate chief physicians and 6 attending physicians (8 with MD/PhD degrees and 6 with Master degrees). Currently, our department has overall 1.5 wards, including 70 approved beds and 66 beds for daytime chemotherapy, which admitted more than 10,000 patients annually.
The mission of our department aims to provide comprehensive medical care for patients with gastric cancer, colorectal cancer, hepatobiliary and pancreatic cancer, advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumor and neuroendocrine tumor, in order to improve the prognosis and quality of life for patients. Our team is dedicated to providing, on the basis of multidisciplinary discussions, comprehensive and individualized treatments, including chemotherapy, targeted therapy, immunotherapy, hyperthermia and intervention therapy, which has created excellent demonstration effects.
The department pays attention to the basic and clinical research of oncology. Over the last five years, the department has launched nearly 20 scientific projects such as grants funded by the National and Provincial Natural Science Foundation and Provincial Science and Technology Planning Projects, and has published more than 20 papers in international (ISI-indexed) journals. The research findings were presented as Posters at international academic conferences for many times. We have also conducted more than 20 clinical trials over the last decade.
At the same time, we paid more attention to the communication with patients in order to better serve the patients. For instance, we established “Shu-Kang Salon” club for gastrointestinal cancer patients and participated in the online doctor-patient communication platform such as "Zhejiang Medical online" online Q & A.
Featured Technology——Hyperthermic Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy (HIPEC)
Our team has introduced HIPEC technology to treat peritoneal metastases in patients with gastrointestinal cancer either for therapeutic or preventive purpose since 2004. With the development of thermal therapy technology, since 2015 we have applied coelom continued circulatory hyperthermia perfusion to selected patients, mainly for patients with refractory ascites or mucinous neoplasms. With our collective efforts, we published related findings in renowned journals. On October 12th, 2019 our hospital was approved as a national training base for deep-heated hyperthermia and whole-body hyperthermia and on the same day, Zhejiang Provincial Consortium for Thermal Therapy was established. The Consortium consists of 12 institutes from Zhejiang province, and our hospital is the core unit of the Consortium. Dr. ZHONG Haijun, director of our department, serves as the Chairman of the Consortium committee. The Consortium is expected to vigorously promote the development of tumor thermotherapy in our province.
Multidisciplinary team (MDT) for diagnosis and treatment of gastrointestinal and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (GEP-NET)
Our department has started a multidisciplinary team that comprises experts in medical oncology, surgical oncology, radiotherapy, pathology, radiology and nuclear medicine since 2014, which offers the optimal and individualized treatment plan to patients with GEP-NET by routine case discussion. The national continuing education medicine project“Multidisciplinary team for diagnosis and treatment of gastrointestinal and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors”has been held annually since 2015 which trained more than 100 physicians each year. Additionally, we send medical staff to attend domestic or international academic conferences annually to exchange experiences.
Contact Information: shizhong@zjcc.org.cn
Last update: March 2020
