Beth Israel Deaconess Creates a Comprehensive Cancer Center

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) is creating a multidisciplinary approach to one of the most challenging cancers—pancreatic cancer.

The Cancer Center at BIDMC is a clinical, research, and educational organization, where multidisciplinary teams of physicians “collaborate to design and deliver an individual care plan for each patient.”

According to BIDMC reps, the heart of the Pancreatic Cancer Center is a multidisciplinary approach team of doctors in the key pancreatic cancer disciplines: gastroenterology, medical oncology, radiation oncology, and surgery. In addition, the team has developed procedures to support patients and their families in making the difficult decisions and choices that come with treatment.

“Pancreatic cancer is one of the most challenging types of cancer,” said Dr. Pier Palo Pandolfi, director of the Cancer Center at BIDMC. “We have assembled one of the world’s most effective interdisciplinary teams to treat patients and to advance the frontiers of pancreatic science and clinical care.”

Reps say that the new Center will provide minimally invasive care in an efficient manner so that patients can direct all their energy to getting well, rather than focusing on paperwork and logistics.

“The careful organization of this program around the needs of patients and families is the result of extraordinary leadership from gastroenterologists, medical and radiation oncologists, surgeons, pathologists, radiologists, nurses, administrators and supportive services,” Pandolfi says. “We are grateful both for their exceptional clinical skills and for their commitment to supporting the full range of human needs at a difficult time in patients’ lives.”

According to a news report by BIDMC, the Pancreatic Cancer Center is unique in many ways:

• Its gastroenterologists perform more advanced endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatograms (ERCPs) – sophisticated diagnostic procedures – than any other hospital in New England
• The Center’s surgeons performed the first robotic-assisted pancreatectomy in Boston.
• The Center’s radiation oncologists were the first and remain the most experienced clinical team in New England to offer the non-surgical CyberKnife radiotherapy system for inoperable pancreatic cancers.
• The Center’s clinical and research teams implement the latest research technology, propagating individual patient tumors in a patient-derived xenograft (PDX) or “patient Avatar” setting. This allows for evaluation of novel combination therapies tailored to meet the precise treatment needs of individual patients.

The program welcomes new patients and referrals. For an appointment, call 888-925-PANC (7262), or email pancreas@bidmc.harvard.edu, or visit bidmc.org/pancreascancer.