JFIM (Journées Francophone d’Imagerie Médicale) is pleased to announce the Breast Cancer Update Congress to be held from March 21-23, 2022 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

As we know now, it is key to gather different specialties to take care of breast cancers. This condition is present in various entity profiles requiring customized and personalized management.

For a transversal approach based on multidisciplinary team meetings model

The genetic identity card and molecular profile of cancers are becoming a main key-driver for their management, and, even of equal significance as the historical prognostic factors. Furthermore, multiplication of diagnostic and therapeutic options benefits all disciplines, therefore talking about breast cancer can only be done through a transversal and multidisciplinary approach.

This finding and viewpoint has led us to conceive new formats for our conferences. We came up with a simple and practical idea: building the conference program on the model of multidisciplinary team meetings (MDTMs

The topics will be treated through the prism of each specialty involved in the management. A round table discussion will follow highlighting the different key points which will close each session.

Technological and therapeutic advances with concrete benefits

Breast cancer is one of the few cancers for which an effective screening test is available. For early detection of small and sub-clinical lesions, Digital 2D mammography (often paired with ultrasound) allows a cure ratio over 90%.

Technological progress DTB (Tomosynthesis or 3D mammography), CESM-Angio mammography (Contrast Enhanced Spectral Mammography) or breast MRI--further increases the detection performance, pre-therapeutic evaluation, treatment response, and support of the development of diagnostic and therapeutic interventional radiology techniques.

Imaging is used at all stages of treatment: alongside surgery, radiotherapy, medical oncology, anatomopathology, molecular biology and genetics. In recent years, several advances have led to a significant impact on patients’ lives; this includes lifestyle intervention for disease prevention, genomic expression tests, better understanding of the disease and its cellular and protein activation pathways, development of targeted therapies, less invasive surgical techniques, sophisticated reconstructions, and shorter, targeted radiotherapy which contribute to improved quality of life without reducing the chances of recovery.

A conference with innovative formats

The format of the speeches will be deliberately short, 12 minutes per speaker, in order to promote and to offer a dynamic rhythm for the congress participants who will follow us online (with replay options available on the same day in addition to live sessions). The communication language will be English.

It seems essential to us, in this COVID crisis, to maintain our exchanges and discussions within and between our specialties as well as to compare our best practices with what is done in other countries.

This year we are developing the scientific program in partnership with our colleagues from North Africa, the Middle East, and the Emirates.

In this period of pandemic, the location of DUBAI-UAE was a natural choice for our colleagues from around the world. It allows us to bring together face-to-face speakers from different countries in optimal conditions of health security and accessibility with regards to Covid-19 constraints and compliance.

In 2020/21, 2.3 million women were diagnosed with breast cancer and over the last 5 years, 7.8 million women have been diagnosed with this disease, making it the most common cancer in the world. Over the past 40 years, advances in treatment have doubled patient survival and it is estimated that today 85% of women survive 5 years or more after a breast cancer diagnosis.

Progress continues and solutions are emerging even in particularly difficult cases such as triple negative breast cancer with antibody drugs conjugates and chemotherapy.

We look forward to seeing you in Dubai or online for this conference dedicated to recent advances in breast cancer management.

Dr. Luc Rotenberg / Dr. Jean-Philippe Minart