Dr. Bela Kis

First author, “Radioembolization with Yttrium-90 Glass Microspheres as First-Line Treatment for Unresectable Intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma – A Prospective Phase 2 Clinical Trial.”

Why did you choose ECIO to submit your abstract?

I’m a practising IR physician at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida. I attended several IR conferences in the US, which were becoming quite repetitive after a while listening to the same experts talking about the same topic. The first time I went to a CIRSE meeting was in 2018 in Lisbon. That meeting was a breath of fresh air. I really enjoyed learning how European IRs approach certain diseases differently than what I was used to in the US. Since I’m practising in a high-volume tertiary cancer centre, it was an obvious next step for me to attend the largest European interventional oncology meeting. Not to mention that Vienna is one of my favourite cities and I’m from a neighbouring country, having grown up in Hungary.

Are there any special considerations to take into account when submitting a FIRST@ECIO abstract?

We just finished collecting the data for our phase 2 study when the ECIO abstract submission deadline was approaching, and we noticed that ECIO has a special category, FIRST@ECIO, which was a perfect fit for our study with newly analysed, never-before published data. By the way, I find it a brilliant idea to have a FIRST@ category, and I wish our IR meetings in the US would introduce this category for abstract submission. The other main reason was that our study, using radioembolisation as a first-line treatment of intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, was complementary to a very recent European study led by Dr. Edeline, which studied radioembolisation plus chemotherapy as a first-line treatment in the same patient population and demonstrated very promising survival results. It, therefore, seemed timely and appropriate to present our data to the European IR community.

Will you submit an abstract for ECIO 2023 as well?

Yes, I’m planning to submit and will try the FIRST@ECIO category again. Interestingly, the abstract I plan to submit has a European root, since the idea for my study came from one of Prof. Thomas Vogl’s papers. I won’t tell you which one, I will leave it as a surprise. Prof. Vogl is my role model IR physician, despite never having met him. He is extraordinary, there are very few topics left on which he hasn’t published an important paper. I may have a chance to meet him in Stockholm at ECIO 2023!