Witness and promote the development of oncology in my country
Writing | Wang Hang
Source | “Medical Community” Public Account
The “enemy” of Gu Kangsheng, director of the Medical Oncology Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, is the malignant tumor of lung cancer and gastric cancer with the first and third highest fatality rate in my country.
According to his experience, most patients who have just been diagnosed with malignant tumors are very frightened and unwilling to accept this fact, thinking that they “cannot live long”, and their willingness to cooperate with treatment is not high. I can’t listen to comfort, this kind of despair will directly affect the treatment effect.
Professor Gu Kangsheng
In order to help patients adapt to the protracted battle against cancer as soon as possible, Professor Gu Kangsheng will fully understand the patient’s condition before treatment, and communicate with the patient according to the different stages of the disease and the patient’s physical and psychological conditions .
He will focus on two aspects for patients: one is the treatment strategy under different cancer stages – allowing patients to scientifically and rationally understand the disease, emphasizing that early malignant tumors have better prognosis after treatment It is hoped that patients will cooperate actively; the other is the long-term survival status of patients with the same type of cancer after treatment – to bring patients confidence and hope in treatment.
Having been engaged in oncology clinical work for nearly 35 years, Professor Gu Kangsheng believes that communicating with patients is also a profound knowledge. “For oncologists, it is necessary to adopt different communication strategies according to the stage of the patient’s tumor, and to keep in touch with family members to formulate the best personalized treatment plan, and use medicine to improve the patient’s treatment expectation and quality of life.”
Research for Oncology
Professor Gu Kangsheng graduated from Bengbu Medical College with a bachelor’s degree in the 1980s.
He did a research project on oncology and developed a strong interest in clinical diagnosis and treatment. “I found that there is a lot of room for development in oncology both in basic research and clinical fields, so I wanted to become an oncologist.”
This option was uncommon at the time. Professor Gu Kangsheng introduced that due to the low level of tumor diagnosis and treatment, and the single means of treatment, especially medical treatment, the drugs are scarce, and most of the patients who enter the oncology department are in the advanced stage, with a short life cycle and poor treatment effect, which makes everyone generally I feel that “being an oncologist has no sense of accomplishment”, and I am reluctant to work in the medical oncology department.
At the beginning, Gu Kangsheng entered the medical oncology department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, which was one of the earliest hospitals in Anhui Province to establish a specialized oncology department. Time has given him the opportunity to come into contact with more cancer types, laying a solid clinical foundation for tumor diagnosis and treatment, and his clinical ability has been rapidly improved.
He recalled that in the early 1990s, in order to keep up with the most cutting-edge tumor treatment methods in the world, the department took the lead in establishing a biotherapy laboratory in China, introducing immune cells and immune cells in immunotherapy. Cytokine therapy and sent him out to study. “After returning from my studies, I introduced cell biological therapy including LAK cells and TIL cells into the department, which greatly improved the clinical treatment level of the department at that time.”
By 1993, the former Ministry of Health organized experts to examine subjects including the Oncology Biotherapy Laboratory of the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University.
Gu Kangsheng still remembers clearly: “The inspection team fully affirmed our work and made our laboratory one of the 13 biological treatment base departments in the country, the former Anhui Provincial Department of Health. A document was also issued, and it was approved as the only department in the province that can carry out cell therapy, which promoted the development of the discipline.”
This experience gave him a deep understanding of the meaning of “clinical research”. After becoming the director of the department, Professor Gu Kangsheng put forward the concept of “developing characteristic disciplines and vigorously improving clinical scientific research”, and continued to make efforts in clinical drug trials, scientific research personnel training, and project research.
Professor Gu Kangsheng
“The entire process of drug clinical research has high requirements on doctors, including a series of contents such as being familiar with the clinical design of new drug research, combining research cases into groups, management, and efficacy evaluation. The team of the department has been trained and improved in terms of clinical professional ability and scientific research level. On the one hand, I encourage everyone to do scientific research in combination with clinical practice, and on the other hand, I have introduced outstanding scientific research talents to promote the overall development of the discipline.”
Professor Gu Kangsheng introduced that there are currently 5 wards in the department, including 4 subspecialty wards for thoracic tumors, abdominal tumors, minimally invasive tumor diagnosis and treatment, and tumor biological therapy, as well as affiliated tumors. Cell diagnosis room, anti-tumor drug clinical research base and medical oncology specialist laboratory. They successively organized and participated in the multidisciplinary collaborative diagnosis and treatment team of MDT for hepatobiliary and pancreatic tumors, gastrointestinal tumors, lymphoma, breast cancer, lung cancer and malignant melanoma in the hospital, providing standardized, high-quality and individualized medical services for patients.
Starting from a small department with only a few people, today’s Medical Oncology Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University has become an Anhui Province “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” clinical key specialty (priority development) and CFDA Approved by the largest scale in Anhui ProvinceOne of the clinical research bases of anti-tumor drugs. The research results and research team of medical oncology have been affirmed and recognized by domestic counterparts. So far, hundreds of postdoctoral fellows, doctors and masters have been trained, and many of them are now experts in the field.
At the same time, the academic achievements and strength of the team continue to be demonstrated. In 2021 alone, the medical oncology team led by Professor Gu Kangsheng published 105 academic papers, including 49 SCI papers, and 10 papers with impact factors exceeding 10 points. The department has also successively won 1 first prize of the Anhui Provincial Natural Science Award, 2 second prizes of the Anhui Provincial Science and Technology Progress Award, the 8th Wu Mengchao Medical Youth Fund Award and the 16th Anhui Youth Science and Technology Award and many other awards.
Professor Gu Kangsheng’s team project “Screening, optimization and clinical application of platinum-based drug efficacy predictive markers for gastric cancer” won the second prize of Anhui Provincial Science and Technology Progress Award
Broadening the boundaries of gastric cancer treatment
In February this year, the National Cancer Center of China released the latest version of the China Cancer Report “2016 Cancer Incidence and Mortality in China”. Since cancer statistics are usually delayed by 3 to 5 years, this It is also the most representative data in our country.
The report includes data from 487 cancer registries covering approximately 380 million people. The results show that more than 8 people are diagnosed with cancer every minute in our country, and more than 5 people die of cancer every minute.
In the opinion of Professor Gu Kangsheng, great changes have taken place in the past three decades in terms of social cognition, pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment of cancer.
Taking gastric cancer as an example, the report shows that the incidence and deaths of gastric cancer ranked third, with 397,000 and 289,000 respectively. He also explained, “From the existing information, the risk of gastric cancer among young people under the age of 35 in our country is not very high. It is mainly concentrated in the age group of 45 to 60 years old, and there is no obvious younger trend.”< /p>
From 2000 to 2016, the mortality rate of gastric cancer with high incidence and poor prognosis actually decreased year by year, but the number of cases increased.
Most of the gastric cancer patients admitted to it were found at an advanced stage. “Because early gastric cancer originates from the mucous membrane, the cancer focus is superficial and rarely affects the digestive function, so there are few symptoms, and occasionally abdominal distension, stomach pain and other symptoms, the patient will simply think that it is gastritis, indigestion, etc., and feel forbearance. It’s over.”
He analyzed that this was also related to the resistance to the use of gastroscopy for early diagnosis. It is considered that gastroscopy is painful and unacceptable. In fact, gastroscopic examination has changed at present, especially the widespread application of painless gastroscope, which makes gastroscopic examination no longer a painful thing.
If detected early, more than 90% of stage one gastric cancer can be cured through surgery. As more and more carcinogenic factors are discovered, such as high-salt pickled and nitrosamine-rich foods, Helicobacter pylori, precancerous lesions, etc., attention and avoidance of these risk factors, and active intervention, gastric cancer It can be well prevented; in the field of diagnosis, painless gastroscopy has become the mainstream, patients can pass early screening, and treatment can be intervened as soon as possible.
MDT team for clinical discussion
Another change occurred in the therapeutic area. “In the past, the medical oncology treatment for gastric cancer was only chemotherapy, and the number of available chemotherapy drugs was limited, and the efficacy was not high. With the addition of targeted therapy and immune drugs, clinical personalized treatment can be adopted according to different stages of cancer. Stage II and stage III patients take Comprehensive treatment in the perioperative period has greatly improved the curative effect.”
However, for advanced gastric cancer, what medicine can do is still limited. A set of the most intuitive figures is that the five-year survival rate of advanced gastric cancer is less than 10%. Professor Gu Kangsheng believes that the current incidence of gastric cancer is Although the clinical treatment level has progressed, more targeted drugs and immune preparations need to be developed.
To this end, “We are still exploring the combined treatment plan for gastric cancer, looking for more predictive markers of immunotherapy that can be used in clinical practice, and exploring new ways to delay recurrence in postoperative adjuvant .”
As the largest clinical research base of anti-tumor drugs in Anhui Province, he leads the department to actively participate in the clinical research of new anti-tumor drugs. So far, he has undertaken more than 30 international multi-center clinical drug studies and domestic multi-center clinical research. More than 100 drug studies have been conducted, and the quality of the completed projects has been affirmed by CFDA.
Become a good oncologist
In Gu Kangsheng’s eyes, being a good oncologist is not an easy task, at least one must have advantages in basic knowledge, research ability, professional English and so on.
“Oncology is a comprehensive discipline, involving a wide range of fields, such as cardiovascular, digestive, renal, respiratory, infection and other disciplines in internal medicine, as well as solid imaging expertise Therefore, on the premise of mastering the basic skills, you must have relevant knowledge and treatment skills of other disciplines; secondly, foreign languages are also very important, you can learn the cutting-edge information of tumors in academic exchange conferences at home and abroad, and you must have a strong clinical research ability .”
Medical Oncology Team of the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University
This year is the 35th year that Professor Gu Kangsheng has been rooted in the front line of clinical and scientific research. He should not only focus on the development of the department and improve the diagnosis and treatment ability, but also think and pay attention to how to take care of the patients more often. and family emotions.
“Cancer has a long course of disease, a high mortality rate, and is difficult to cure. People are inevitably afraid. Before patients know that cancer is coming, few people will be prepared, panic, confusion, collapse, etc. In fact, it is a normal performance, and at this time, a professional needs to stand up and tell them what to do.”
He regards doctor-patient communication as a knowledge and subdivides it into several stages. “If it is the early stage of diagnosis, I will not directly say that it is a tumor, but euphemistically express that some problems have been found somewhere, and it needs to be further clarified. The purpose is to let patients cooperate.”
Once the diagnosis is confirmed, Professor Gu Kangsheng will give advice according to different stages. “The prognosis of patients in the early stage is good, and professional medical treatment strategies are enough. If it is a late stage patient, I usually talk more implicitly, such as telling the patient that we have some treatment measures that may be helpful to you, and then give some successful cases after treatment. , patients can feel confident when they see good results.”
When communicating with family members, Professor Gu Kangsheng used “seeking truth from facts” and “doing within our capabilities” to summarize, not only telling the family members about the progress of the disease, possible consequences, and prognostic effects, but also Will persuade family members to choose the most suitable drug according to their own economic conditions.
Although he is nearly 60 years old, Professor Gu Kangsheng still cannot stop. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays, he needs to rush to various areas of the hospital for medical visits. During the rest of the time, he conducts ward rounds, consultations, academic seminars and other matters in the ward, and his schedule is full.
Professor Gu Kangsheng’s team and graduate students
Relying on the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, the department also undertakes the teaching of the “Oncology” course for undergraduates and postgraduates, and the foreign language teaching, assessment and evaluation of “Oncology” of the International College. Foreign students enter the teaching work of clinical practice, and participate in the English version of the textbooks organized by the People’s Health Publishing House.
Every year, more than 20 doctors and masters graduate from his oncology teaching and research department, and he also accepts advanced students from other hospitals in the province, and organizes the Anhui Provincial Medical Oncology Conference. , An medical oncology forum, seminars on new progress in clinical oncology, medical oncology residency training courses and other forms and channels to cultivate oncology professionals.
“I highly encourage young people who are interested in developing in the field of oncology to continue their studies and improve their comprehensive capabilities through clinical, scientific research and other aspects.” He told the “medical community” that this is not only a For the development of the discipline, it is also about the fate of cancer patients.
Professional Profile
Professor Gu Kangsheng
Doctor of Oncology, Chief Physician, Second-level Professor, Oncology Doctoral Supervisor, Postdoctoral Cooperative Supervisor
Director of the Oncology Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Director of the Oncology Teaching and Research Section, “Jianghuai Famous Doctor of Anhui Province”
Member of the Medical Oncology Expert Committee of the Chinese Medical Association Oncology Branch
Standing Member of Oncologist Branch of Chinese Medical Doctor Association
Director of the Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology (CSCO)
He has been engaged in clinical and scientific research work in medical oncology for a long time, especially focusing on individualized treatment of lung cancer, gastrointestinal tumor and malignant lymphoma. He has published 2 oncology monographs and participated in the compilation of 9 books, among which, as the editorial board member, he participated in the editing of the national “13th Five-Year Plan” English version planning textbook “Oncology”, and published more than 100 papers as the first author, including more than 20 SCI papers ; And served as the editorial board of “Clinical Oncology” and “Anhui Medicine”; presided over nearly 100 national clinical drug research, more than 10 national and provincial scientific research projects; won the second prize of Anhui Provincial Science and Technology Progress Award as the first person to complete One award.
Source: Medicine
Editor in charge: Jun Ling
Proofreading: Zang Hengjia