Jolanda van Dieren, gastro-enterologist, NKI, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Biography

Jolanda van Dieren is a gastroenterologist in the Netherlands Cancer Institute. She is specialized in diagnostics and treatment of esophageal- and gastric cancer, specifically in hereditary gastric cancer.

Summary of presentation

Diffuse-type gastric cancer (DGC) is challenging to diagnose at early stage and prophylactic total gastrectomy is recommended for those at genetic risk for DGC, which is associated with long-term complications. Stomachs of hereditary DGC (HDGC) patients show multiple early-stage lesions, however, most of these remain indolent and only 10-40% of patients develop lifethreatening, advanced DGC. This underscores the need for improvement of surveillance strategies, reserving gastrectomy for patients likely to develop advanced DGC. Recent evidence suggests that those who are diagnosed with (indolent) early lesions may consider continuing surveillance. Therefore there is a need to better discriminate indolent and non-indolent DGC during endoscopic surveillance, which is the area of interest of our research group.