PSOGI Statement on COVID-19 and Postponing the Biennial Meeting

With this global pandemic of COVID-19, an unprecedented healthcare disaster is claiming hundreds of thousands of lives across our shared home earth, leaving no mercy to anyone, anywhere in this world. The sharp increases in patients with confirmed diagnosis and related diseases are putting ever-devastating stresses on our medical and healthcare system.

Saving lives, containing the infection, and combating the virus with our utmost efforts have become our shared mission for people from all walks of life, particularly we medical professionals. Because this pandemic could last for this year at least, many things have to be rescheduled to accommodate the new situation.

Confronted with this crisis, the executive committee of the Peritoneal Surface Oncology Group International (PSOGI) have decided to postpone the 12th International Conference on Peritoneal Surface Malignancy in Beijing (Beijing PSOGI2020), from September 18-20, 2020 to September 10-12, 2021 (from Friday to Sunday). We have made the decision, following the suit of Tokyo Olympics and after careful consultation among the PSOGI executive members.

For over 3 decades, PSOGI has been dedicated to fighting cancers with peritoneal metastasis, the most challenging form of cancer spreading. With the all-round efforts in basic researches, translational studies and clinical trials and applications, we have developed a series of novel techniques in diagnosis and treatment of peritoneal malignancy, and cytoreductive surgery (CRS) with hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy (HIPEC) have brought remarkable survival benefits to patients with peritoneal metastasis from colorectal cancer, gynecological cancer and pseudomyxoma peritonei, to name a few.

PSOGI is committed to improving treatments of peritoneal cancer by supporting researches in peritoneal surface oncology. This COVID-19 crisis cannot stop us. Instead, new opportunities will be created. We have to tap our resources and develop better strategies and mechanisms for PSOGI and for our patients. We encourage our international colleagues to share our thoughts and deeds, vision and reason, to foster a stronger international coalition against cancer peritoneal metastasis.

Stay strong, we combat the disease together!

Stay well, we win the war together!

Stay happy, we shape a brighter future together!

Paul H. Sugarbaker, USA

Yan Li, China

Yotaka Yonemura, Japan

David. Morris, Australia

Piso Pompiliu, Germany

Rau Beate, Germany

Moran Brendan, the United Kingdom

Olivier Glehen, France

Diane Goere, France

Marcello Deraco, Italy

Victor Verwaal, Demark

David Bartlett, USA

Santiago Gonzalez, Spain

Ignace de Hingh, The Netherlands

Claudio Quadros, Brazil

Aviram Nissan, Israel