Russian Association of Oncological Urology
15 years is the age of youth and bloom
The relevance of the multidisciplinary alliance, which became the basis for the Association foundation 15 years ago, is increasing.
Russian Association of Oncological Urology is an expert alliance. Our common goal is to improve the diagnosis, treatment, quality of life, and life expectancy in genitourinary cancer patients.
The Association has been officially in existence for exactly 15 years. But its history started much earlier. In 1994, at the Medical Radiological Research Center of RAMS in Obninsk (Kaluga Region), the first All-Russian Conference “Pressing Problems in the Treatment of Urologic Cancers” was held with the participation of the CIS countries. The conference gathered 200 people back then, and by 2004 there were more than 800 participants. That’s when the need to create the Association became evident.
In 2005, the Association held its first congress, and in the same year, the first issue of the quarterly scientific and practical peer-reviewed journal Cancer Urology was published. In November of the following year, it was included in the List of Leading Scientific Journals and Publications Determined by the Higher Attestation Commission (HAC), and since August 2006 it has been included in Scopus.
Since September 2016, the journal has been indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection, Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI).
The Association was founded by leading urologic oncologists from three major oncological institutions of Russia: Boris P. Matveev (N. N. Blokhin Russian Cancer Research Center, Moscow), Igor G. Rusakov (P.A. Herzen Moscow Oncology Research Institute), and Oleg B. Karyakin (Medical Radiological Research Center of RAMS, Obninsk). They also created conditions for the development and growth of a new generation of leaders: experts for whom urologic oncology is more than a surgical specialty.
Over the past decade, at least three Nobel Prizes have been awarded for developing drug treatment methods which are now routinely used in urologic oncology. The advances in diagnosis, staging, and classification of diseases are also remarkable. Currently, urologic oncologists are seen as multidisciplinary experts. While surgery still plays a major role in their work, drug treatment has become extremely important. These days, a urologic oncologist is an expert working at the intersection of surgery, radiology, chemotherapy, and genetics, with a good knowledge of modern diagnostic methods and experience in interpretation of their findings as well as adverse event detection and management.
It is these multifaceted competence requirements in urologic oncology that increase the importance of a multidisciplinary association which provided the basis for the Association foundation 16 years ago.
Over the past years, Russian experts have joined international guideline development committees and have been involved in international consensus procedures and international registration studies on numerous occasions. They participate regularly in American and European congresses as speakers and mentors in surgical training.
The Association is not entitled to take full credit for these achievements. But we believe that working by ourselves, our achievements would be but partial, and the integral development of patient care would be impossible.
Nowadays, the Russian Association of Oncological Urology has 69 regional divisions, uniting more than 2,500 specialists. Every year the Russian Association of Oncological Urology holds a congress, as well as regional conferences, trainings, and seminars, i.e. events of direct expert assistance aimed at professional advancement, experience sharing, and assistance promotion.
Dear colleagues, we are happy to have you with us! We are grateful to everyone involved in this multidimensional and large-scale work! Our association is 15 years old — the age of youth and bloom. We are open to cooperation and looking forward to new victories.
Chief Editor
M.D., Professor, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, President of the Russian Association of Oncological Urology, Deputy Director for Scientific and Innovative Work of the Administrative Office, Head of the Urology Department of the Research Institute of Clinical Oncology of the FSBI “N.N. Blokhin National Medical Research Center of Oncology” of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, Moscow