[Ways of organization for the treatment of malignant neoplastic diseases]

To meet the challenge, quantitative and especially qualitative, of optimum care for the large number of patients with disseminated neoplastic diseases, it is essential to create new, strongly interdisciplinary patient care systems. Acceptance of "medical oncology" as an important new subspeciality of internal medicine and the establishment of well equipped onco-(hematology) divisions, assuring adequate coordination of "total oncological care" within the traditional structure of large regional hospital centers, represents a necessary prerequisite. Adequate therapy and optimal supportive care for the many tumor types and stages must be critically evaluated in suitable controlled, largely cooperative clinical trials. To facilitate such evaluations and guarantee optimal access and care for the majority of tumor patients, the availability of competent and regional distributed clinical tumor centers, and their close coordination in national and international cancer research groups, is extremely important. These regional interdisciplinary tumorcenters (usually within large "maximal care" type general hospitals), and especially their outpatient departments, need to cooperate permanently on a partner-to-partner basis with physicians and smaller non-specialized hospitals in their neighbourhood. They are also responsible for establishing an adequate teaching and consultancy program for physicians, nurses and the public in their area.