Regular Meetings by Pathology Groups in Veterinary Oncology

Scientific research has a dynamic modus operandi to answer questions in a diverse set of fields, including human and veterinary pathology.

Multidisciplinary meetings are essential to create guidelines, update the scientific community, and favor discussions of controversial issues. In 2011 and 2012, we participated in 2 national consensus conferences for canine mammary tumors ¹ and canine mast cell tumors (manuscript in preparation). Both meetings were organized by several entities, including the Brazilian Association of Veterinary Pathology (ABPV). Drawing on the most recent national and international scientific publications, the group discussed several aspects of treatment, prognosis, and diagnostic approach. Other important issues discussed were sentinel lymph node biopsy for clinical staging and the scheduling of a new national consensus concerning canine and feline lymphomas for 2013. These meetings were extremely important in providing a more critical approach based on new scientific achievements. However, similar to other meetings, ^2,4 these conferences are still restricted to some expert groups and are not held regularly, contributing to a delay in dissemination of findings. However, human pathology meetings are held on a periodic basis because the rapid advance of medical technology provides new diagnostic methods and prognostic factors that need to be inserted into existing classification systems. ³

From this overall experience and given the fact that new tumor entities are continuously described, we think that more regular pathology meetings involving an international pathology group formed by several colleges and associations worldwide are needed to update tumor classification schemes and to provide official guidelines that can contribute to the standardization of pathology reports and research around the world.