The papers published by The Lancet Oncology in its November 2009 issue cover management of a variety of malignancies: HER-2 positive breast cancer, neck cancer, T-cell and natural-killer-cell neoplasms, advanced non-small-cell lung cancer, liver cancer and endometrial cancer. The guidelines represent consensus statements from the 2009 Asian Oncology Summit held last April in Singapore. The journal co-hosted the event.

"I was tremendously impressed and pleased with how this worked and how the different key opinion leaders were brought together in the Asian Oncology Summit," Anderson said. "It was a great learning experience for me in addition to the fact that it was a demonstration that this stratified guideline approach is in fact useful and functional."

The first broad dissemination of the BHGI guidelines came in October 2008 when journal Cancer published a special supplement, "Guidelines for International Breast Health and Cancer Control," which detailed guidelines for low- and middle-income countries to implement programs to detect and treat breast cancer, the most common disease among women worldwide.

SOURCE Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center