Shanghai East Hospital launches multidisciplinary thoracic care model

Shanghai East Hospital on Friday inaugurated its Thoracic Tumor Clinic and Treatment Center, signifying a breakthrough in thoracic cancer care. The center's multidisciplinary team has achieved a remarkable feat, formulating a treatment plan within just three days of a patient's first hospital visit, giving patients a crucial head start in their treatment journey.

The hospital said this is the nation's first center of its kind that integrates multidisciplinary efforts within a single ward, significantly improving medical efficiency and quality while pioneering a new model for thoracic cancer treatment.

Lung cancer remains a major public health challenge. Experts note that traditional treatment models often require patients to navigate between various departments, making it difficult to unify expert opinions into an effective, cohesive treatment plan.

The new center addresses this critical issue. Chen Yihan, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and president of Shanghai East Hospital, said that the new center will focus on multidisciplinary collaboration to build an integrated system encompassing prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment, research and rehabilitation.

By bringing together experts in targeted therapy and immunotherapy for lung cancer, thoracic surgery, respiratory medicine, minimally invasive interventions, radiotherapy, pathology and imaging, the new center creates a multidisciplinary treatment hub that breaks down barriers between specialties. This model is the first in the country to integrate resources from various disciplines involved in thoracic oncology within the same ward, both spatially and procedurally.

With such an innovative framework, patients are immediately taken under the care of a multidisciplinary team upon admission. They receive comprehensive evaluation and the formulation of an optimal treatment plan, benefiting from a seamless, all-encompassing service loop covering diagnosis, surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy, targeted therapy and immunotherapy, as well as rehabilitation and follow-up treatment.